Perros Guirrec to Roscoff

We left Perros Guirrec to sail towards Roscoff which is a distance of about 20 miles.  There was just enough wind to sail but only just and the forecast was for a drop in the wind later in the day.  We have a sail called a Cruising Chute which is used in light wind to gain extra speed.  It is the largest sail that we carry but we seldom use it as it can be difficult to manage with just two people.  Once the wind gets into it the strain on the ropes can be a lot and if you haven't got them all secured properly you can get into quite a bit of bother.  Anyway this day we decided it would be a good idea to hoist it and gain a bit of extra speed.

The sail is a large triangle of cloth about 50 ft from top to bottom and probably 20 ft along the bottom edge.  The plan is to get the boat running down wind with the main sail out wide and to hoist the big cruising chute behind the main, shadowed from the following wind, to prevent it from powering up before we had it all properly hoisted and set up.  Once hoisted you turn back onto your course, the sail fills and away you go. THAT IS THE PLAN but all plans are made to be rendered useless by what uncle Norman used to call THE BUGGERATION FACTOR!!

On this occasion Chris was on the helm and I was on the foredeck with the sail in its bag.  Emerging from the top of the bag are the three corners of the sail marked Head, Tack and Clew.  The head is top corner, the tack is the one that is tied down to the bow of the boat and the clew is the one that has the sheet ropes tied to it.  I connected the ropes, told Chris to set the autopilot to sail on a run and she hoisted the sail by pulling un the halyard.

WELL, I don't know what happened but the sail came out of the bag twisted in a knot, just at that moment the wind shifted so that the chute was no longer shadowed by the main, the sail filled and got itself tangled around the baby-stay and we were in a bit of bother.  I'm sure that at one point I was wrapped in sailcloth like a mummy and the only features visible was my beer belly and glasses.  Chris quickly got the boat back on the run but I couldn't get the sail un-knotted.  No matter how much I swore at it it refused to obey and just seemed to have a mind of it's own.  Eventually, after much faffing and cursing I got the sail down and we tried it all over again.  The same thing happened so we gave up and decided it was all too difficult with the wind shifting as it was so we motored the rest of the way.

Roscoff

Roscoff is an old town with a ferry port, Brittany Ferries run their service from Plymouth but when you look at the coastline it is surprising that you can navigate a ship in there as the rocks and shallows all around look horrendous.  Up till last year there was no marina so your only option as a small, visiting boat was to anchor but they have now built a brand new marina.  The major parts of it are finished but the facilities are not.  Showers and toilets are currently in portacabins and the capitainery is likewise in temporary accommodation.

It is quite a game going to the loo.  When you open the door and walk into a cubicle and shut the door behind you there is so little room that you can't bend down to retrieve your shorts from around your ankles.

Likewise in the showers there is no seat or shelf to put your wash-bag on, there are a couple of hooks for clothes and the floor is a cm deep in water because there are no shower doors and the water sprays everywhere.  When we arrived it was the day before the start of a big yacht race and there were about 100 extra people (visiting race crews) to accommodate so to get a shower took forever and when you did get in there the water was cold.

However Roscoff is a wonderful place dating back a long time.  There are wonderful old stone buildings and streets all cobbled with granite.  There are two harbours, one is the new marina mentioned earlier and the other is a drying harbour dating back to the year dot.

 

Roscoff old harbour

 

 

Old harbour

 

 

On the day after we arrived there was the start of the Yacht Race and we walked down to the town to see the racing.

 

vantage point for seeing the racing

 

 

 

 

Yacht Race

 

More to come later re-Roscoff ..................................

 

Jersey to Lezardrieux to Perros Guirrec

JERSEY  TO LEZARDRIEUX TO PERROS GUIRREC

The four of us on Jersey with Gorey Castle in background.

 

Replacing a bent bottle screw

In my last posting I mentioned the accident with the rafted boats.  The boats were moored up together in calm conditions with ropes tying them together.  Once we had moved to St.Helier we noticed that one of these ropes had been tugged to breaking point as the wind increased and the shock had bent a 12mm diameter bottle screw.  The bottle screws are the adjustable bolts that connect the mast shrouds to the deck of the boat, in effect they hold up the mast.  The bent screw was not showing signs of cracking but you never know so I decided to replace it.  A sail boat mast like ours is held vertical by a number of guy wires called shrouds and stays.  There is a front stay, a back stay and in our case a port and a starboard cap shroud which is connected to the top of the mast and a port and starboard inner shroud connected just below the mast spreaders.  The shroud that had been damaged was the inner starboard one and I didn’t know whether the mast would be stable if I detached it.  I thought that the cap shroud would be strong enough but I needed some moral support so Chris and I spent a day visiting marine engineers and asking questions.  We decided that the mast was probably strong enough to support itself without the inner but to be absolutely sure we took all the halyards from the top of the mast to the starboard toe rail and winched them up as tight as we could to replace the effect of the bent shroud.  Once these were in place I very gingerly loosened the bottle screw checking that there was no movement at all which gave me the confidence to undo it completely and replace the bent component.

 

The bent screw takes tons of pressure

 

 

A bottle screw

 

Evenings aboard

Evenings can get expensive if you decide to eat out all the time so a variety of activities always are on offer such as Scrabble and Rummicub.

 

 

Miss Carla pretending she isn't competitive!!

 

Jersey to Lesardrieux – Monday 22^nd July

We intended to leave St.Helier for a night crossing to Lezardrieux which meant that we had to get out of the inner harbour in the afternoon, as it is behind a sill, and wait in the outer harbour till the tidal flow was right.  In the English Channel you basically travel east/south on a dropping tide and north/west on a rising tide.  The Channel Islands have very strong tides and if you get it wrong you can be there sailing full pelt but actually going nowhere so we waited for the tide.  We planned to cast off at about 7.30 pm but a large thunder storm developed so we decided that we would stay put till the morning tide.  Chris and I set about filling water tanks and pumping out holding tanks ready to leave at 7.30 am the following morning.

So the time arrived and we cast off and sailed out of St.Helier.  Weather was set fair but with a risk of mist or fog patches so we had our radar switched on in case visibility was poor.  As we emerged from the harbour we had to avoid the Fast Cat – the huge catamaran passenger ferry that docks there.  It loomed out of the mist blowing it’s fog horn and the 3 or 4 little boats which were accompanying us all scattered in different directions to get out of its way.  After that we set our course to run outside the shipping channel in the shallower water where the big ships can’t go and we proceeded down the coast leaving La Corbierre lighthouse behind us (though we never saw it in the mist) and set a course of 240⁰ (T) towards Lezardrieux.  Visibility was pretty poor all day ranging from about 100m at worst to a couple of miles at best.  We kept track on the GPS plotter and kept an eye on Pete and Carla in NANUK on the radar. 

 

Chris at the helm.

 

 

Chris on watch.

 

 

The entrance to the River Trieux on which Lezardrieux sits is surrounded by rocks and craggy outcrops and the Ile De Brehat and the tides run past the entrance at an alarming rate.  We arrived just as the tide was about to turn against us and even then we had speed through the water of 6 knots but a ground speed of as little as 2 Knots until we got into the river.  NANUK, Pete and Carla’s boat has a smaller engine than ours and was hardly able to make way at all.  We got into the harbour at about 6pm but they were two and a half hours behind by which time the seagoing current in the river prevented them from coming up stream so they decided to find an anchorage and come up the river the following day when the tide was with them.

Lezardrieux is a small village with a church, a couple of shops and a small supermarket, the River Trieux is what we in the UK would call an SSSI (site of special scientific interest).  The charts refer to it as a site of marine culture.  There are oyster beds, fish farms, wetlands and loads and loads of sailing craft from historic old gaffers to shiny new pleasure craft.  A very picturesque river but a very unforgiving one if you get your passage planning wrong.


The marina is situated about two or three miles up stram and you have to remember that the tide runs through the moored up boats just as fast as it does in the main river.  Also the rise and fall of the tides is very significant.



 
 



You can see the ramp down to the pontoon.  This is at about one third of the tide.  At high tide the ramp is horizontal and at low tide it is approx. 40 degrees.  The sea wall that you can see in the background has about another 1.5m of rocks showing at low tide.

 

Chris and Simon with beers!!

 The Dreaded Coifficient

Tides and tidal streams are subject to variations which you probably know are called Neaps and Springs.  A spring tide commonly occurs 2 days after a full moon and a neap occurs basically half way between 2 springs.  However some springs are bigger than others and the North Brittany coast has some of the biggest tides in the world and so a 5% increase, which in the Solent would hardly be noticed, on the Brittany coast can cause disruption and ferocious tides.  We happened to go to Lezardrieux when the biggest tide of the year was expected which I think is why Pete and Carla had such a difficult time getting in to the river that night.  The French refer to these differences of tidal height by a system called coefficients.  The coefficient starts at 20 and goes up to 120 and the day we arrived it was 107.  The mean is considered to be 95 for a spring so this tide was approximately 13% bigger than usual.

That evening we were sat in a bar by the harbour and the tide came right up to the top of the sea wall and flooded the car park and two or three people had to paddle to get their cars out.

David and Sarah – Wednesday 24^th July

left to right:   Simon, David and Peter

Carla and Pete have some friends who live near Paimpol so the following day we invited them over and went out for a meal at the harbour restaurant.  They all had Moules et Frites (yuk) I had a pizza.  Seriously though, it was a great evening and we all laughed a lot.  The following day they invited us to their house and so Pete and Carla went early to see Paimpol town and harbour and we stayed to do some chores on the boat.  Swabbing the decks and stowing loads of stuff used over the last day or so.  We agreed to meet them later only to find that there were hardly any buses so we decided to walk the 5Km through very picturesque countryside.  The hydrangeas and honeysuckle and sweet peas with their vivid colours were wonderful.  Chris and I were a little knackered after the walk as it felt a lot longer than 5K (Chris put this in)....... my sole contribution so far!!!!

 

Bridge at Lezardrieux

 

 

River upstream from Lezardrieux at low water

 

 

 

 

Landmarks on our walk

 

David and Sarah had two old friends staying with them called Anth (Anthea) and Sue who were on a cycling holiday and they joined us for supper as well.  We all seemed to laugh all evening, a great time was had by all.

 

 

LEZARDRIEX to PERROS-GUIREC – Thursday 25^th July

Having come to terms with the tides at Lesardrieux we managed to make our exit from the river and headed west with the tide approximately 25 miles to Perros-Guirec where we anchored in the bay for the night.  The extremely low tide meant we were anchoring in about 2.5m and the tide woulf rise to about 12m so we had quite a range to deal with.  The rule of thumb is that you let out chain equivalent to 3 x depth at high tide (known as the rode) so we were anchored on 30m of chain so at low tide we had a 60m circle. 

 

NANUK under sail

 

 

'April Dream' under sail

 

 

 

When sailing you see many contrasting things.  Sometimes you'll see a modern cargo ship then you might see something like this making it's way to Roscoff.

 

 

Square rigger off Perros Guirrec

 

 

Weather worn scenery

 

 

 

 

This is the furthest west we have been on the French coast.  Xxxx

Guernsey to Jersey

Originally had planned to sail to France from Geurnsey but Pete wanted to see Jersey.  Jersey has a number of attractions but we decided to try to find an anchorage rather than staying in a marina.  The land/sea scape in the area is quite dramatic.  There are treacherous rocks and impressive cliffs which coupled with 7m tidal changes makes for challenging sailing.  We left St.Peterport steering SE towards the NE corner of the island planning bto anchor in Bouley Bay.  When we arrived it was very pleasant but when the wind increased from the NE it became very rough and uncomfortable so we weighed anchor and sailed a few miles further to shelter behind the sea wall in St.Catherine's Bay.  In the morning we moved on to moor on a public mooring buoy at Gorey Castle.  There was a flat sea and we planned to go ashore for 2 hours and then return to the boats and sail on towards Isles Chausey.  The boats were tied up together on one buoy and while ashore the weather turned quite windy and the boats were being severely buffeted by the waves.  We had a frightening ride back in our rubber dinghy and then had to climb aboard what can only be described as a bucking bronco.  Carla and Chris were fantastic getting aboard and then we had to detach the two boats from eachother and motor away.  We decided to sail back to St.Catherines where we assessed the damage.  Carla and Pete had lost a mast head light and a bow light and suffered some damage to the pulpit and we had a bent rail in our pulpit and a bent bottle screw on our starboard inner shroud.

Channel Hazards - Alderney Race to Geurnsey

As mentioned the channel crossing is a major step and not without hazards even in calm conditions.  5 miles north of Alderney is the entrance/exit for the shipping separation zone - all east bound ships are restricted to a southern passage and all west bound ships are directed to follow a more northerly route.  They look as though they are slow but they travel in excess of 20 knots (as fast as a speed boat) but with all that tonnage they cannot easily stop or change direction so anybody in a small sailing vessel has to keep well clear even if they technically have right of way.  Just to put it in perspective when you see a ship coming towards you over the horizon it will be with you in about 12 to 15 minutes so you have to get used to judging whether you are approaching it or past it.  It can be very unnerving.  We left the Needles with Blighty behind us and sea ahead.   Visibility was fair but sometimes reduced to as little as 2 miles.  We kept a good visual watch but also monitored the radar to spot any ships early.  This trip we only saw about 7 ships so we crossed the separation zone with ease and arrived at the entrance to the Alderney Race at about 1500 when we started to see the speed over ground increase.  It was mid way between neaps and springs so our speed only reached a max of 9 knots.  We steered SW, rounded Herm and arrived in St.Peterport at about 1930 a trip of  90.5 nautical miles. Peter and Carla had primed the harbour master that we were arriving and he met us at the harbour mouth and guided us to raft up alongside their boat NANUK.

 

April Dream and Nanuk in St.Peterport (outer harbour)

 

 

The Murrays aboard AD

 

 





Crossing the English Channel

The  trip from Lymington to the Channel Islands is at it's shortest about 60 nautical miles.  The plan had been to cross to Alderney and make our way from there to meet up with Carla and Peter Murray who were already sailing in the area and were going to be in St.Peterport on Guernsey this weekend.   We decided to make the trip there instead of stopping in Alderney.  This would make our channel crossing approximately 80 Nautical Miles (about 100 land miles) and would take up to 17 hours.  There were two reasons - firstly the wind was in the north east and Braye Harbour on Alderney is a bay open to the NE and very exposed in a NE wind so would be very uncomfortable for an overnight stay as waves would constantly be buffeting the boats at anchor there.  Secondly we had been delayed by two days with tech. problems and as such we wanted to move on further.



 

Alderney is the northernmost of the inhabited Channel Islands and sits about 25miles west of Cherbourg.  The channel islands, apart from the Bristol Channel and a few ports on the East Coast of the States and Canada have the biggest tides in the world.  On a spring tide in Alderney you can see a tidal range of over 9m.  This is caused by the Atlantic rising tide filling up the English Channel and a wave of inertia channeling its way up past the islands building these huge tides.  Consequently the water flows very fast both on the rise and the ebb causing a phenomenon known as THE ALDERNEY RACE.  If you sail from Cherbourg to St.Peterport you must negotiate the race which starts to run in a south west direction at the same time as high tide at Dover.  Once in the race there is no turning back.  Our boat has a top speed through the water of about 8 knots max. and the water in the race, on a big spring tide, can travel at over 10 knots so it's basically a case of hitting the race at the right time and trying to make sure you don't run into anything as you are swept southwest towards Geurnsey and Sark.  A bit like Poo Sticks if you remember your AA Milne.

 

So our plan was to set off from Lymington, get through the Hurst Narrows at the Western exit from the Solent, round the Needles Lighthouse and set a course of approx. 187 degrees on the compass and sail all day to hit the entrance of the brace just as the turn of the tide to gain the advantage of the south flowing race.  We needed to average 5 Knots all day.  Weather and wind were set fair with a risk of fog patches, NE f2 to f3 (very light wind), sea state smooth.  In fact ideal conditions were predicted.  What we got was 2 out of 3.  There was no wind at all.  Visibility was about 2 miles and the weather swelteringly hot and we ran with the engine all day.

 

  THE NEEDLES

The trouble with boating is......endless!!!!

Well what a performance!  For three years we have been planning to take some time out to undertake an extended cruise to the Med so before embarkation I went to the doc for an MOT and she told me that I had THE BIG C.  So that put paid to any plans until the treatment was over.  Then there was the convalescence which took some months then a hernia operation and finally I proclaimed myself fit for the voyage of a lifetime and suddenly there was a huge amount of work to get done to prepare April Dream for the trip.

• Clean and epoxy the hull
• Reinstall wind generator
• Service the engine
• Clean the sails
• Check all the rigging
• Fit new fuel tank
• Launch the boat
• Shakedown sail
• Fill up with diesel

Thanks to the help of my Russian friend Andrew I couldn't have got it all done!

 

Andrei doing the scraping

 

 

April Dream with bottom scraped back to old Epoxy Coating

 

April Dream with new epoxy coating applied

 

On 2nd April the ship was launched at Wicor Marine and she was placed on her mooring and that we thought was that.  Ready for the season.  A few maintenance jobs still to do before she was fully ready one of which was to re-fit the Loo.  I was half way through the job when I found that some new seals were needed so I went home planning to get them the next day to complete the job when in the middle of the night I had a call from the coastguard informing me that April Dream was sinking. Such a shock is something that I hope none of you ever have to receive.  It completely overwhelms you and you struggle to know what to do.  I raced down to the boat yard to find my boat with about three tons of water inside and probably minutes from going to the bottom of the harbour. The boatyard guys were there along with a Police boat and members of the Fire Brigade who between them managed to pump out the water and once the problem had diagnosed (I had left a sea cock open) and rectified the boat was handed back to me almost wrecked.

As it turned out the damage was covered under our insurance policy and so we passed the boat to the excellent care of Goodacre Boat Repairs and RK Marine engineers who re-commissioned her over a period of 3 months and handed her back to me at the beginning of July.

 

April Dream being loaded onto boat mover at Port Solent

 

 

April Dream on boat moving trailer

 

On the way to the launch dock

 

 

April Dream on her mooring

 

 

So we were launched on July 8th and Chris and I spent all weekend reloading all our boating equipment back on the boat and stowing it all ready for the first sail.  On the Monday RK Marine came to commission the engine and once they were happy we took back possession of our beloved boat.

 

The following day we spent re-stowing kit such as life rafts, fuel cans, tool bags, fenders, warps (ropes to non sailors) and every other kind of sailing paraphernalia that you can think of and we thought we were ready.  We slipped our moorings on 10th July on our shake down sail to Lymington.

 

 

So here we go - off over the horizon.  Just as we were about to leave we heard from our friends Tony and Helen Krarup that they were in Lymington on the Solent having just acquired a new boat, a Moody Eclipse 33 which they had sailed from Dartmouth so we arranged to meet up.  On arriving there we tied up and spent a lovely afternoon catching up on lost time when a much larger boat that was looking to moor up asked if we would move to allow them to moor on the pontoon and we could go alongside them.  This is quite normal when things are busy, one takes the most suitable berth for ones boat.  As we motored off to manoeuvre in the river we heard a loud alarm from our engine panel, the engine was overheating.  It was only commissioned 24 hours earlier by the Volvo agents and deemed in perfect working order.  When I investigated it seemed that our bilge was full of green coolant, the hose leading to a heat exchanger/radiator had not been tightened up and the antifreeze liquid coolant had all leaked out into the bilge of the boat.  It was Friday evening and there was no way of contacting the engineer till the following Monday, so the following morning I contacted the agents and explained that there would be a nuclear eruption if they didn't help us out immediately.  In the mean time I found a local Volvo dealer who supplied a 5L tin of coolant (Nearly £40) and tightened the leaking hose and refilled the coolant.  This appeared to fix the problem.  Eventually the engineer who did the work got in contact by mobile and after quizzing me about the problems apologised taking ownership of the fault and since then the engine has behaved perfectly.