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Friday 13 January 2012

Crossing the Channel


As ever leaving the harbour was one of the harder parts of the day and as you haven't really left the Solent until the Isle of Wight's firmly behind you this took even longer than usual.
I tried to sail for a while but must admit to failure because we had light winds mostly dead astern and I wanted to get to Cherbourg with enough light to 1) find the way in and 2) moor without too many dramas. This certainly won't be the last time this happens.
So, for the day, we were reduced to the status of a big slow motorboat, which is expensive on the diesel but otherwise no big problem.
We tried the autopilot for a bit but it's compass keeps changing by about 2 degrees either side of an average bearing which means that when it's steering it keeps correcting itself and then magnifies it's errors because it's fluctuating around its correction which was made for it's original error which was... Needless to say I disconnected the thing before it took us to Norway via the Canaries and/or my head exploded chasing the logic of it's actions. I have since been told it will work better taking it’s directions from the GPS, so we’ll give that a go soon.
The areas which are dead in line between the Traffic Separation Schemes (TSS) either end of the channel were predictably busy but safe, we came close to one ship who replied to my admittedly nervous call, saying that we were fine where we were. I throttled back a little bit anyway because I'm a bit chicken when I have my entire family floating out of sight of land on a 40 foot piece of plywood. With less visibility, more traffic or a little more paranoia I can imagine it being a little more hairy.
Being out of sight of land was also less dramatic than I'd expected, yes it was strange at first. It was a good type of strange with a strong feeling of freedom.
One small surprise was what the strength of the tides outside Cherbourg did to the boat speed and direction. It was only a small surprise because you prepare for these things in your plan but when theory becomes practice it is a whole other ballgame. In this case the concept of travelling at 12 knots at an angle to where you're actually pointed. 
Arrival in Cherbourg couldn't have been simpler and it was days before customs visited us. When they did come round the French customs couldn't have been nicer they seemed most interested in the boat, it's equipment and crew. I was asked if I had more than 50,000 euros in cash and also if I had anything to declare but it was almost nice to be acknowledged by this point, we were beginning to feel like illegal immigrants or fugitives from the law.
As I write this we have sailed across Lyme Bay/around Portland Bill, crossed the English Channel and "gone foreign", braved the tidal streams around Cap de l'Hague, entered a port after crossing what is (at low tide) half a mile of occasionally rocky beach, locked into a port, braved the rocks outside St Malo in force 6 winds and never once gone into the same port twice. We said the other day when we sailed most of the way to Carteret that we felt like proper sailors, and I think we are genuinely getting there. We spent a couple of years driving to Weymouth and sailing in and out of Weymouth harbour (very infrequently) and learnt more than we admit about boats doing that but what we've done since has taken that a lot further.



In preparation for our adventure I soaked up all the theory I could on all aspects of voyaging on a small sailing boat including the RYA syllabus on the longbow dvd - much recommended to anyone who doesn't have the time for a formal course or as a supplement to those who do. I have added the link to the right.

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