Weekend sailing trip (with pictures)

As planned the easter weekend was used as an extended weekend sailing trip.  I left home after lunch on Thursday and picked up one of the total crew of four and made my way down to Southampton.  The first job was to check on Evelyn who had been relaunched by the marina staff on my behalf the week before, albeit that they forgot to relaunch her on 19th March and had to be reminded.  They were kind enough though to relaunch her at no cost to myself.  The first thing I noticed was that they had taken her into her berth stern first.  This is not unusual with motor boats but usually sailing boats have their stern facing away from the pontoon to afford some privacy in the cockpit.  I boarded her and found that the trip switch on the electrics had tripped out so the battery was not recharging and fixed that. I also bled the stern valve which had clearly not been done at relaunch, although I suspect they didn’t fire the engine but rather towed her around to her berth.

I collected my wet weather gear and sleeping bag and pillow and locked up Evelyn.  This weekend we were taking out Emily V, my friends boat.

We had dinner in the waterfront bar on Thursday evening before slipping for the western Solent.  This takes a couple of hours off the main crossing.  With a full moon we were just a couple of days off a spring tide and on arrival at Yarmouth at 1am we decided to pick up one of the mooring bouys outside the main harbour.  Being berthed overnight on a bouy which seems to be plonked in the middle of the solent is a little concerning but actually the waters there are quite shallow so nothing big was going to run us down in the night.  After just four hours sleep we slipped off the bouy and headed quiety out of the western Solent and set a course of 183 degrees.  We figured that an approximate 12 hour crossing would drift us east on the tide for about 6 hours and then west for the remaining 6 hours sending us on an “S” shaped but tide efficient route to the entrance of Cherbourg harbour.  We figured correctly and no course adjustment was neccessary until we entered the eastern entrance at Cherbourg.

In the evening we found a little french bistro serving home made food and tucked in with a beer and a couple of small glasses of wine.  In the morning two of the crew were adamant that they wanted to go shopping and so between them filled three supermarket trolleys full of booze.  We had to get the taxi driver to make two trips to get it all in the car and then back at the marina had to do quite a few trips to ferry the goods from the edge of the harbour onboard.  Loaded with provisions we set off west to pick up the Alderney race down to St Peter Port on Gurnsey.  This took about 5 hours.  On arrival at Gurnsey there are quite a few rocks to navigate through so a cautious entrance is necessary.  Berthed just outside the Harbour was Oceana, the cruise ship which is based for much of its time out of Southampton.  We slipped past her and into port.

In the evening we found a fabulous fixed price Italian restaurant called La Pergola.  For a tenner we had a lovely three course meal, although we did pay extra for some lovely Brown Brothers wine to consumate the meal.

Sunday morning we again slipped our berth and headed North to Alderney on a trip of about 3 hours.  We picked up a bouy in the harbour and set up a table in the cockpit for a feast of crisps, sausage rolls, cocktail sausages and ham and cheese sandwiches after which we rowed ashore in the dinghy and wandered around the island.  Amazingly Alderney, with a polulation of around 2500 has a stunning Thai restaurant on it so Thai food was the order of the day.

On return to the boat we once again slipped our mooring for a night sail back to blighty.  No sooner had we left the harbour at about 9pm, my three fellow crew members hit the sack and left me alone on the helm for a two hour watch, my first ever night time cross channel solo watch!  It’s quite disconcerting watching lights of other vessels in the distance and having no idea how close or far away they are.  We made good progress during my two hour watch averaging about 9 knts and by the time I was relieved at 11pm we were just entering the southern shipping lane.  I put my head down and got up at 4:30 to make the current watch a cup of tea and to ready myself for my second watch.  On taking over at 5am we were about 10nm south of the isle of wight and in sight of St Catherines lighthouse to the front of us and The Needles lighthouse well out to the west of us.  I made a significant alteration of course and imediately we picked up speed with the tide carrying us to the Needles.  At about 6:30am we were abeam the Needles lighthouse and I rolled away the foresail and gently turned us into the Solent.  The water was like glass in flat calm and our trip home was uneventful until about 1/4 mile out from Calshot Spit where we sailed into fog.  Within minutes visability was down to less than a couple of boat lengths and we were in Southampton water where there is a lot of big shipping activity.  We monitored the radar and posted two men up front in addition to the helm who was navigating by chart plotter and I tell you it was bloody scary.  Most of the bouys we were trying to locate were only visable when we were just a few feet away.  At one point we saw a huge ship appear from nowhere only to discover that for whatever reason he was stationary on the water which is just as well!  An hour later the fog was gone, we were back on Emily V’s berth and once of the crew was cooking up bacon sandwiches.  All in all a great sailing experience.

Here are some pictures