Friday 9 September
The alarms roused my crew at the unsavoury hour of 0400BST, to ensure they maximised on the available daylight for the supposed 80-nautical mile passage to Chichester. Anticipating wind from the South-Southwest, we set off on a heading a little East of North, intending to offset the peculiar tidal flow outside Cherbourg, caused by the twin headlands of the peninsula. We expected to be sailing for the next 14 hours. Chichester has a sand bar that needs to be crossed at certain points of the tide (when there’s enough water), which today was before 2000BST.
This is never the Mate’s favourite passage, and this was no different: harbour rot after two weeks without sailing has lost her sea legs, lack of beauty sleep, no breakfast, a short chop as we exited the Grande Rade soon followed by a swell setting in from the West that we didn’t shake off until we were in sight of the English coast, and there was an inevitable shade of green. Frustration with the wind, already not cooperating and heading us too far East, was briefly eased by the stunning sunrise as the amber glow seemed to break the surface of the sea and elevate in front of their eyes, before disappearing into dark low grey clouds for much of the day.
The wind was light enough for us to fly the beautiful new red gennaker, but they made a hash of gybing it and by now the Mate had one hand on the helm and the other round Jimmy the trusty blue bucket. Skipper relieved her to sleep it off, until the wind increased and it became essential to furl the gennaker away, but it was obviously feeling precocious and twisted itself into knots instead. Mate came back to the helm so Skipper could go forward to the bow, yank the whole sorry mess down manually, bundle it roughly into its bag and chuck it down the companionway into the cabin. Unfortunately, this was too much even for the usually cast iron innards of my poor Skipper, and for the next hour Jimmy did sterling double duty. Fortunately, Skipper had refitted Jeanny my friendly autopilot, and he did cooperate and gave them both an opportunity to recover whilst maintaining watch as we approached the first TSS (Traffic Separation Scheme), the Southern main shipping lane for large cargo vessels travelling the length of the Channel.
Eventually Skipper settled down to rest properly, and when Mate detected a potential situation in our approach to the path of a large ship, she was able to start up Trevver, who was also on form for once, and haul in the main sail as there was now little wind but still uncomfortable swell. We motored North until we were clear of the shipping lanes. Skipper came back on watch at 1500BST, Mate was up to sipping water and all was (relatively) well in a brief respite of warm sunshine. It’s amazing how often something in the natural world occurs to lift the crew’s spirits when they need it most.
While Mate snoozed, Skipper rigged and unfurled the new staysail, including setting up running backstays for the first time. By the time she was awake again, we were approaching the Needles Channel, West of the Isle of Wight. She was pleased to be proved right, as she had realised on her previous watch that this would be the revised landfall – and anyway, it was too late by now to cross the bar at Chichester. We flew into the Western Solent in the best conditions of the day, except it was now dusk, and in complete darkness, Skipper navigated us safely into Newtown Creek, a beautiful anchorage just East of Yarmouth. It was 2300BST – a passage of 19 hours, 12 of which Mate was ill.