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Friday 15 June

St Peter Port

Undertook a few chores and then went foraging / provisioning. There’s a really good fishmonger near the pier. The markets weren’t what we expected, just a supermarket in the old the market building. Wandered around town a little more.

Tried to update the blog but the internet connection kept dropping out so gave up basically.

When to the yacht club (which we stumbled upon at happy hour) which was a buzz with the crews participating in tomorrow’s yacht race back to Jersey. Otherwise not much more to really say about today.

Thursday 14 June

Guernsey – St Peter Port

Left reasonably early and headed for St Peter Port. Parked ourselves on the waiting pontoon and went into town for a short while. When we got back there were two other boats rafted up against us and the rest of the pontoon was full. Before we were allowed into the marina “Port Authority Maintenance” workers came on to the pontoon. A diver went into the water and examined all the boats bottoms.

Explored the town looking for a good pub and seafood restaurant in the end cooked on board. The guide books / pamphlets aren’t particularly helpful in pointing out the areas where the restaurants are.

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Wednesday 13 June

Sark

Had a comfortable night, not too much swell other than the occasional wobble. The wind is set to change so we moved to another anchorage on the other side of the island (Port a la Jument). Took the dinghy to another bay where there was a path up the cliff leading to the “town” – the land that time forgot.

Tuesday 12 June

Sark

Left mid afternoon and headed for Sark.

topped at a very nice anchorage (La Greve de la Ville). Didn’t venture into town as it was a long walk up the cliff before a 25 minute walk.

Monday 11 June

Alderney

After a reasonable nights sleep headed into town. The weather is just lovely, blue skies, little wind and a nice temperature. As it’s Monday there aren’t many tourist attractions available, so we took hired a taxi to take us to the most interesting places on the Island. A very good move.

There’s not much to the island therefore spent most of the afternoon on the boat rocking and rolling with the “Alderney Roll”.

Watched boats come and go and trying to take up mooring buoy number 12 which was precariously positioned very close between us and another.

Sunday 10 June

France or the Channel Islands?

Got up quite early but still needed to take diesel so we weren’t on our way until after 7:00 am.

The wind was blowing a SE’ly so we managed to set the sail after the Needles for either Cherbourg or Alderney. There were a couple of other boats heading in the same direction.

It started to drizzle so visibility at times was under 2 miles, which makes keeping watch hard graft. Luckily we have AIS and radar which greatly assisted in making sure we didn’t get too close to many boats in the shipping lanes.

We decided to go for Alderney and about an hour before I saw land and then shortly afterwards I saw less land but more fog. We entered the harbour in Braye Bay in fog – took up a mooring buoy.

There was a nice swell coming in throughout the night which meant being nicely rocked and rolled to sleep.

(Skippers note: the mooring buoys are really close together and the swell makes the boats all rock and roll in different directions).

Saturday 9 June

Yarmouth

Left mid afternoon for Yarmouth. Got a nice little sail in tacking across the Solent. We were considering anchoring at Hurst point but as we needed to take diesel decided to stay in Yarmouth.

The harbour staff are just brilliant at finding you a berth and assisting as necessary. We witnessed a couple of minor mishaps Gen came to the assistance (with others on the pontoon) to a crew of a french boat which was finding it difficult to get on to the pontoon.

Wandered around a little but come back to the boat quite early as we have an early start tomorrow.

Friday 8 June

Cowes

The wind throughout the night was as promised Gail Force and we think gusted between 40 – 50 knots. BBC weather suggested around the Needles they had 79mph winds.

The boat’s being blown off the pontoon – a fair stretch for my little legs.

Today’s a day of completing chores and getting ready for the Channel Islands.

Wandered around town again in the evening. The RNLI were changing over their inshore rescue rib with another (which to be perfectly honest didn’t look any different to the old one) so watched the spectacle and then headed back to the boat for an early evening.

Thursday 7 June

On our way to the Isle of Wight

Left Brighton just after 5am. We’ve had a little bit of tide with us, so were making reasonable progress. Had to motor to Selsy Bill after which we put out the sails to help push us along as the tide turned.  (Skippers note:  we went on the outside and the tide was very strong against us – at times we were doing less than 3 knots – not pleasant especially as we experienced overfalls around there as well).

I was below when the weather report was on and all I could hear is Gail Force 8, Severe Gail Force 9 and even a Gail Force 10 and rough turning very rough and, worst of all, high seas for a time. Gen reassured me that we would be in Cowes well before the weather whipped up.

There wasn’t an awful lot of traffic to contend with whilst entering the Solent or heading for Cowes, but there was rain, so keeping watch was hard work.

Arrived at Cowes Yacht Haven just after 2pm – in good time and a couple of hours before the winds strengthened. Wandered around the town, had a couple of drinks and an early dinner and most of all an early night to bed.

Wednesday 6 June

Brighton

Wandered around the marina and prepared to set off early tomorrow morning – there’s a short weather window before the seriously bad weather sets in.

Caught up with a few friends at the Brighton Marina Yacht Club.