Single Handed Back to Devon

Unusually, Victoria Marina provides a good WiFi internet connection. So, over the next few days, I spent a lot of time studying weather sites on the web. One of the best ones that I have found is: http://www.passageweather.com/ which supplies predictions of the likely wind and waves to expect during the following few days. It indicated that Friday morning should give me a suitable weather window to get back to Devon. However, to get the tides right through Little Russel, I would have to leave at 6:00 am. The sill at Victoria Marina was only open around midday so I left the comfort of the marina on Thursday ready for an early start on Friday. Handling Jomima on my own (38 feet long and 10 tons) required a lot of planning to make sure that, in particular, I could safely leave a mooring and then arrive at the new pontoon with fenders, ropes etc ready for mooring up as required. I again checked the weather, before turning in for the night, and it seemed as though it should be ok.

I got up at 05:00, cast off at 06:00, and before I left the harbour stowed all of the ropes and fenders. Little Russel was quiet and a one metre swell made its presence felt as I headed across the Channel. Fortunately the autopilot was able to keep to the course that I had programmed in advance, despite the swell. I passed the mid Channel light Vessel and crossed the two large shipping lanes without too many problems. The swell then began to subside as the tide changed and I began to relax and enjoy the 75 mile journey. The conditions allowed me to average 15-16 knots and the English coast appeared as a smudge on the horizon at 09:30. At 11:00 I entered Brixham harbour and, using the VHF radio, asked them for a mooring and checked which side I would have to place the fenders. I then put the engines into neutral and drifted while I set up ropes and fenders. Fortunately the mooring was quite narrow, and there was little wind, so that once I had got Jomima into the mooring she did not drift away while I attached ropes to the pontoon. It was a great relief to get back safely before the weather changed that afternoon.

Flying Home

Early on Saturday morning we attempted to cruise Jomima back to Devon. As we headed up towards the English Channel, between Herm and Guernsey, we entered a passage between the islands known as Little Russel. The charts do not give any indication of potential problems but, afterwards, I found that the sea bed slopes upwards at this point. Unfortunately, when this was combined with an incoming spring tide, the sea was very rough. Green water came over the bow and we were thrown about so violently that many items jumped out of place and onto the floor of the boat. I therefore waited for a gap between the waves and turned Jomima back to St. Peter Port.

Later I checked the weather and could see no let up in the steady flow of depressions coming across the Atlantic. Ann therefore chose to fly home while I remained with the boat in St Peter Port’s Victoria Marina.

Very High Water

Towards the end of the festivities this evening the St. Peter Port Life Boat entered the harbour and moored near the entrance. This coincided with high tide and it was a very high tide. This morning the low tide was at 0.5m and the evening high tide was 9.9m. That is a tidal range of 9.4m. Behind the Life Boat is a floating pontoon which is attached to the inside of the Victoria Marina harbour entrance, which can be seen to the right of the boat. The pontoon is level with the top of the wall and the water is within 1/3 m (1 foot) of the top of the wall. If the sea had been rough it would have been very scary.

Fun & Games

This evening, in Victoria Marina, St. Peter Port, they held an amusing festival. The events included: Ladies Raft Race (hotly contested by many teams), Tug of War (across the harbour entrance with the loosing team being pulled into the water) and a ‘Flying’ display (people dressed up and attempted to fly from a platform across the harbour – with predictable results). The position of our boats gave us a grand stand view of the proceedings and John and Ann on the yacht Tempus can be seen here enjoying the festivities.

A Walk along the Coast

This morning we caught a bus to Sausmarez Manor. Sadly, this was not as interesting as expected so we walked down to the coast where there was a beautiful beach called Fermain Bay. This, as the photograph shows, could have been an exotic location on a tropical island. It was very lovely and we were able to sit in a restaurant, overlooking this view, and enjoy a coffee and a chat to some very friendly locals.

Next, we decided to walk the three miles back to the boat along the coastal path. This proved more challenging than we had expected because of the number of steps that we encountered. However, it was well worth while and nicely worked off the cream tea that I should not have had with the coffee this morning. One amusing incident was it is not only the local people that are friendly. I can only assume that the local wild rabbit population do not have many enemies locally because I was able to walk unusually close to them.

Playing Soldiers

If you are in St Peter Port, Guernsey late morning then it is quite likely you will get a bit of a shock when there is a very loud bang. It sounds very much as though a gas cylinder has exploded. However, it is only the 12:00 O’clock gun firing off. Yes, at midday, from the castle walls, they fire a canon every day. So today we decided to visit Castle Cornet which has stood guard at the entrance to the harbour for nearly eight centuries. The visit took longer than anticipated because there are three excellent museums on the site: The Story of Castle Cornet, Maritime Museum and The 201 Squadron (RAF) Museum.

In the afternoon we returned to the boat where it is safely tucked up with two friendly sailing boats.

Escape from Lezardrieux

The small town of Lezardrieux was very pleasant and it was a shame to leave behind the excellent patisserie, but Ann wanted us to begin our journey back to England. The obvious next stop was St. Peter Port again where we could refuel with diesel at 56p per litre. The weather forecast for the week ahead was dire apart from this morning. I checked the tides and realised that, unless we left no later than 6:00 am we would be pushing to Guernsey against a strong tide, so we got up at 5:00 am. We thought that this was early but later discovered that the yachts had left at 4:00 am!

Watching the sun rise as we motored down the estuary was magical. However, from Lezardrieux it is nearly ten miles before you are really at sea and the swell was quite big. I had plotted an alternative run into Treguier, if the sea was to rough, but we decided to continue and I set the speed at a reasonably comfortable 16 knots.

At sea, in the English Channel, there are basically two types of wave: wind waves and swell. Wind waves are short and choppy and have ‘white horses’ as the wind increases above force 4. Swell waves tend to be higher, but much further apart, and may have travelled for hundreds of miles, from storms out in the Atlantic Ocean. Today, unusually, there was only swell but it increased as we got further out to sea and it was hitting our port quarter (back left hand side). This meant that the waves were trying to turn us sideways on and could cause us to roll severely. The autopilot could not cope with this so I went on to hand steering. The Guernsey VHF later said that the swell was about 3 to 5 feet high. However, when two or three waves came together they must have been twice as high as that. I concentrated on keeping the boat pointing towards Guernsey but making sure we were not sideways to the next wave. This meant looking left and anticipating what it would do when it hit us. On occasions, our speed increased to 19 knots as we headed down the front of a wave and then decreased to 12 knots as we clawed our way up the back of it with only a view of the sky as the boat reared upwards. Ann later said that grabbing the whisky bottle and vanishing beneath a duvet below had attractions. However, she stuck with it and Jomima coped extremely well with just a bit of help from me.

Once we moved into the shelter of Guernsey the swell abated and I was able to leave the helm to Ann while I ran to the heads to relieve the pressure in my bladder – something that I had not been able to do for the past three hours. We arrived safely in St. Peter Port and headed for the refuelling berth, where I found I could not switch off the port engine. There are no spark plugs on a diesel engine and switching off the ignition has no effect. It is stopped by a servo pulling on a lever to cut off the diesel in the fuel pump. A 4p knut had dropped off and detached the servo so I stopped it by hand and relaxed after an ‘interesting’ journey.

Exploring Lezardrieux

The windy weather has returned and force 6 to 8 has been promised for today. Jomima stayed put today but we planned to explore the village. A couple of days ago we were visited by four people, from two other boats in Paimpol. They arrived by bicycle, electric ones. It did not take long for Ann to express sufficient interest in their machines for her to be offered a ride. We were told that you had to pedal for about three seconds and then the electric power would come in to assist you. Ann set off and after three seconds, as I fully expected, she let out a squeal as her speed increased without her having to put in any more effort. Quite where we would keep one of those I do not know so we will have to stick to our small folders for now.

It would have been nice to have been able to use two of their bikes to enable us to get up the hill to the village. Sadly, we had to walk but knew that it would be downhill coming back with fresh food supplies. The village turned out to be small but pleasant and well equipped with a super market, excellent bread shop and a coffee shop where we were able to get an English newspaper and sit outside reading while drinking excellent French coffee. It’s a hard life being a nomadic boater.

Lezardrieux

What we do each day, on Jomima, depends very heavily on the weather. It has been quite windy and showery for the past few days so we caught up on a few jobs: using the local launderette, polishing Jomima and planning our next port of call. Today promised to be a short period of better weather so, when the tide had raised enough for the lock gate to open, we manoeuvred out of our space on the quay side and headed for the lock. For those of you of a nautical nature we had to motor against a spring to get the back end out, without hitting the boat in front, so that we could reverse past the two boats rafted up behind us. Unfortunately, by the time we managed to get away from our mooring, the lock was already full of boats that also wanted to make an early start. We therefore had to try and hold our place, in the breezy harbour, in a queue of boats waiting to go in the lock. The lock eventually opened and, after letting out the large incoming commercial boat, we all revved engines and bow thrusters and positioned ourselves in the lock. As soon as the outer gate opened we all formed line ahead and followed the long channel out to sea.

We were heading for Lezardrieux which involved cruising down the rocky passage between the mainland and Ile de Brehat. Again we were grateful for modern technology as we followed the plotted route across the electronic chart as well as double checking our route on the paper variety. It was actually very pleasant to arrive safely at the entrance to the Trieux River and be able to cruise upstream, in calmer waters, to a marina mooring in Lezardrieux.

Bastille Day

Today is Bastille Day, which is a public holiday, and in many ways it is like November 5th in England. The important thing is: how good are the fireworks going to be this year?
The evening began with two parades from villages either side of Paimpol. Small children were able to travel on a flower bedecked trailer behind a tractor; larger ones walked carrying a lantern. Meanwhile, back in Paimpol, they were having a ‘Fest Noz’ in the town hall. We paid them a visit and it turned out to be a kind of barn dance but to music played on an instrument that sounded dreadfully like bagpipes. Everybody knew the steps, including the small children. We stood and watched until we could not stand the strange sounding music any longer.
At about 11:15 pm the two processions arrived at the quay side and the fireworks began. We were later told that the number of fireworks was less than two years ago, probably because of budgeting restraints. It is, of course, the same in France as it is in the U.K. However, we thought that the fireworks were great, but please judge for yourself.

Ile de Brehat

As mentioned before, this coastline is extremely rocky and tidal. It is therefore quite possible to cruise over rocks at high tide, in an area that will be well above sea level at low tide. Two additional Broom boats arrived today and there would have been three of them but one caught his propeller on a rock, as he left a lock, and caused £9,000 worth of damage. There are therefore times when it is wise to visit some areas by local ferry. One such area is the Ile de Brehat, which is an island near here which is absolutely surrounded by rocks as described above. We therefore decided to visit them today - by ferry.
The island is situated off the north east corner of Brittany and is a favourite destination for walkers and cyclists because there are no cars allowed. Firstly, we visited an old fort (built to keep away the British pirates) which now houses a world famous artistic glass factory. There were many beautiful items here and Ann fell in love with a glass dish, which she bought and they carefully wrapped for our journey. I just hope that it makes it home in one piece.
When we arrived it was high tide and the walk from the boat was about was about 50 yards. The tide was out when we needed the ferry to get back and the walk was about ½ mile. The ferry captains really have to know the local waters extremely well.

Abbaye De Beauport

A few miles from Paimpol is Abbey de Beauport. It was founded by two Welsh saints in the 12th century and eventually abandoned about 100 years ago. Since then the remaining buildings were used for a number of things including saltpetre storage and cider making. However, they are now restoring the magnificent buildings and gardens. Time to get the bicycles out!
I managed to find a back roads route to the Abbey which, because it ran along the coast, was fairly flat. All of which pleased Ann. The journey was delightful with many views of the rocky coast which we had cruised past only two days ago. The helpful lady that took our money was able to loan us a guide in English. After admiring the work that they were doing to restore the place, we cycled down to the sea and pedalled, briefly, along the coastal pathway that seems to go right along this stretch of coast. Apparently, the path was set up by the customs officers who used to patrol to try and stop smuggling and the pirates. This area has much in common with Cornwall.

A Short Story

On the last evening before we left St. Quay-Portrieux, I was walking back along the visitor’s pontoon and noticed a massive boat coming in to moor. I commented to some people sitting in a reasonably large yacht, fairly close to Jomima, that I hoped the boat was not about to moor between the two of us. We fell into a brief conversation and the lady sitting on the boat suddenly said, in a loud voice, “I know you. You rescued Sooty. Come and have a drink with us”. This took me a little by surprise but, needless to say, I accepted the invitation. The lady then explained. Last year Jomima had been moored next to their boat in Oban, Scotland. As I was leaving the finger pontoon between us their dog “Sooty” jumped off their boat, missed the pontoon, and ended up in the sea. The lady and her children panicked and all hell broke loose. Her husband was on a telephone conference call at the time so “Sooty” was left to swim for himself. Without thinking, I knelt down on the pontoon, grabbed “Sooty” by his harness, and hauled him out and then promptly forgot all about it. However, they had not.
It is amazing how you meet people, which you have met before in far flung places, when you lead a nomadic boating life style like ours.

Paimpol

When the tide goes out around here it seriously vanishes. The difference, at present, between low tide and high tide is about 11m (see Paimpol harbour entrance above - yes they are the same place!). Consequently even Paimpol, who have an entrance lock rather than just a gate, restrict entry to 2½ hours either side of high tide. There are also a lot of rocks that are just covered by the tide so you have to carefully follow the channel. Once the tide goes out the rocks are easy to see but the sea goes out beyond view from the harbour. We arrived at the start of the channel at about 10:00am and spent the next half hour with Ann checking the pilot books, to identifying the various channel and rock markers, while I steered and checked our route against the chart plotter. Once inside the lock we were moored against the old harbour wall with ‘Penhelyg’.

They have a new Tourist Information Centre, with helpful staff, that were even able to tell us where to get some English paper backs from, to replenish our well-read stock. In the evening we had a pleasant meal, at a local restaurant, with Pete and Liz. We all agreed that the day had been tiring because whilst the journey was short a navigational error could have been expensive. Sadly, the locals were noisy and we could have slept better that night.

Binic

We had planned to move Jomima to Binic. Entry to their harbour is difficult, because of the tides, so we chose to check it out by bus. The entry, by water, is through a gate that only opens at high tide, for between one and two hours, and occasionally not at all when the tide is particularly low (neaps). This makes the timing of your arrival extremely important and leaving difficult, particularly if the tide is late afternoon and you have a long way to go.The visitor’s moorings are right in the centre of town with restaurants nearby. The one we chose for lunch proved excellent and we savoured galettes (large thin flat round cakes) filled like an omelette washed down with local wine. They also have some excellent beaches. However, the town is very small and we had pretty well exhausted what it had to offer by the end of the day. I think that we will head to Paimpol next and leave out Binic for this year.

Market Day

All towns of any size in France seem to have a weekly outdoor market. The range of goods on sale takes me back to my childhood, when I would visit the Wolverhampton open market with my mother. For us, the best items on sale here are the fresh fruit and vegetables – most of which looked as though they had been picked early that morning. Irresistible.

St. Quay-Portrieux

New port, so exploration required. We got a small map of the town from the harbour office and headed for the Tourist Information. There was a long queue of people, so we helped ourselves to the limited range of literature available. From our map we could see a less direct but more interesting coastal footpath back to the boat. This place has five excellent beaches and looks a great place for families. Needless to say the beaches were all in use over the fine weekend – sadly high winds and rain is promised for at least a couple of days.
The deep water harbour faces south and is sheltered from the prevailing winds. The tides in this area have a range of up to 12m at springs. When the tide goes out there is one hell of a slope on the walkway down to the visitor’s pontoon that we are on. With 1,030 berths it is like a vast car park for line up on line of small French weekend fishing boats. However, the visitor’s pontoon is totally different with a wide variety of boats moored up including a new arrival: ‘Penhelyg’ – originally from Brixham. We have not seen Pete & Liz and their Atlantic 42 since we saw them in St. Vaast on our way to Paris two years ago. It is amazing how itinerant boaters like us meet up periodically.

France, St. Quay-Portrieux

We had planned to leave St. Peter Port, Guernsey, for Paimpol in France, yesterday. We left the inside marina and moved to the outside area, the previous evening, to enable us to leave without waiting for high tide. However, once we got to sea and found that the high(ish) winds were causing us to be covered in spray from the choppy sea we decided that we would leave our departure until tomorrow. This was a wise choice and the following day was much better. Paimpol, like most harbours in the area, can only be entered at two hours either side of high tide. We would have arrived early so we headed for St. Quay-Portrieux instead. Unusually the journey was sunny and relaxed so you have actually got a photograph of me today.

Sark

Again we decided that a ferry was preferable to risking scraping the bottom of Jomima on a rock visiting Sark. I can now confirm that there are no cars on Sark, which is larger than Herm, at 3 miles long and 1 ½ miles wide. However, it also has the highest point of any of the Channel Islands so the potential walk from the harbour to the town was steep, so we took one of the tractor drawn buses. If you want to tour the Island then you have three choices: walk, hire a bike or take a horse drawn cart. We chose the latter and were lucky because our cart only had the four of us as passengers rather than the usual 10 people. George (the horse) took us on a gentle, two hour, tour of the island with a stop at the fantastic ‘Le Seigneurie’ Gardens i.e. the Governor’s house. It would take too long to explain the politics, which is based upon the islanders being a self-governing Crown Dependency with the Barclay brothers, who live on a neighbouring island, causing problems locally. The pace of life is different from the mainland. Traditional activities such as farming, fishing and local crafts provide employment for the 600 people on the island. However, some modern technology such as broadband and mobile telephones are also available – but definitely no cars.