Dartmouth to Saint Peter Port 83 nm
Monday 14 July
Penny had a fantastic first Channel crossing.
As we left Dartmouth at 8.30am, an incoming yacht shouted across, ‘Its windy out there!’- but we were prepared with our oilies on and David and I had our wellies on too.
We started off with a reef and the cutter (small jib) expecting the winds from Aeolia, but it was only 17 knots – so we shook out the reef as we felt very underpowered – fortunately a pod of dolphins leapt along to entertain us.
Then we swapped back to our normal jib… this prompted a squall of 27 knots and we rapidly reefed back down to one and then 2 reefs.
We were regularly hitting 10 knots and the waves built beautifully into proper cresting white horses; there was very little rain and soon we had blue sky and buoyant seas.
I was the first to hit 12 knots and then David claimed he hit 13 – we had a good force 6 all the rest of the way and regular bursts of force 7. Winds were rarely less than 23 knots and often 27-30.
Our new crew took it all in her stride; this is Penny’s first Channel crossing and the waves and wind were only a delight to her. She did wonder why there were no other yachts.
There were only 2 flies in the ointment of our sailing bliss:
Firstly, while crossing the busy shipping lanes, a very nervous cargo officer told us to slow down (poor La Bamba) and wanted us to pass behind him by one mile. He was only going 11 knots – so were we. But he was a tad bigger (by a factor of 30,000) so we luffed up, slowed down in huge waves to 4 knots and he took forever to go ahead.
The dolphins felt sorry for La Bamba and came to play around the bow. No photos, far too much going on!
Secondly, our second reef fell out. The LFR (low friction ring) lashing failed and our main started flogging. I said, ‘Oh dear, what can we do?’ And Skipper replied: ‘I’ll fix it’ – and he did: he secured our boom (because we know how bouncy she likes to be) with the sheet, the topping lift and the preventer so that she was rock solid. Then he re-threaded the reef. What a star.
And off we went again. The crew was pretty impressed, as was I!
We sighted Guernsey about 15 miles off – very good visibility all the way – and were soon in slightly calmer waters as we hardened up round the corner to Saint Peter Port.
We reached harbour at 18.30 but we took a little of time to raft up onto a German boat as we were a bit tired!
In the marina showers Penny overheard a sailor boasting about crossing in 18 hours.. she was too polite to say we did it in 10.
We have to stay in the outside marina as La Bamba draws 2.3m but it’s a small price to pay for such a fast and magnificent crossing!
