Sat-Sun 18-19 July
Guernsey to Roscoff 74nm
The one thing you can rely on when sailing is that the weather forecast is always wrong.
It was pretty windy all day and we were promised light winds building to 15-20 knots in a sensible direction….
We enjoyed gentle airs at first as dusk fell and we followed the crescent moon westwards.
Then the wind died completely (after teasing us for a bit) so we motored throughout the night. Glad we filled up with diesel in Guernsey!
We took 3 hour watches from 11pm with David and Mark taking the first and Sam and I doing the 2-5am etc. The nights are short: darkness fell around 9.45 and the sky began to brighten before 4am.
We saw thousands of stars as the moon set early – a couple were shooting, and a lot were satellites. Mark and David got the sunrise:
In the morning we gladly turned off the engine and enjoyed 14 knots, surging along with the Yankee, staysail and main.
We saw gannets plunge-diving and we all saw dolphins.
Having seen virtually no boats all night we arrived at exactly the same time as one enormous ferry arrived and another left.
They squeezed us in on quite a short finger but it’s a very nice facility here and a very pretty town (see next blog!)
