The Journey Home

We had a plan. It went something like this  .. "we will sail north across the Bay of Biscay in a direction dictated by the wind. We have (effectively) no motor, so we wont motor much. The weather is settled, so it wil be safe and easy (even if the wind is settled in the North).  If the wind heads us we will simply bear away a little .. none of that "tacking on wind shifts" nonsense".

And so we did.

1400 Tuesday 23rd August

At first every thing went swimmingly.
The northerly wind came from the East and we sailed happily northwards.
Night fell.
The wind dropped and went North.
We did two things: we bore away a little (well, about 50 degrees)  and slowed down to about 2 knots.

As usual we had a shift system. 2 hours on and 4 hours off.

The first night seemed to go on along time. During my 2 hour shift we sailed almost  3 and a half miles. Given that it was about 300 miles north (bearing  000 degrees) to the french coast and our heading was 050 degrees, at this rate we should expect to make landfall  sometime in October 2019.

However it was a beautiful starry night, peaceful and still, with just dolphins for company.

Wednesday 24th August. 

Daylight brought a slight breeze. We plodded on.
Later that afternoon I was woken from my third sleep of the day to the sound of thunder and action on deck.  My valient crew, threatened by a major electrical storm did three things:
1.  Reefed
2.  Put the VHF and Martin's iPad in the oven  (please google "Faraday Cage")
3.  Tried to sail away from the storm.
As a result:
1. The sails were reefed
2.  Next day Martin couldn't find his iPad
3. We sailed very quickly in entirely the wrong direction

It was quite windy and exciting.  As there was a lot of lightning, I briefly tried not to hold onto anything metalic on the basis that:
1. I thought this to be a  good idea
and
2. There was no room for me in the oven.

We survived (obviously).

During the storm, Jean cooked a very nice "Chicken Pasta Splod".   I very much enjoyed the small amount of this that passed my lips. Unfortunately most of it was blown off my spoon before I could eat it.  It is amazing where Girandole now turns up.

Thursday 25th August was fairly uneventful until I decided that we needed to conserve electricity. Martin, enthusiastic as ever to follow my instructions, therefore turned off the plotter and the autohelm. Our boat, sensing freedom, therefore turned 180 degrees and set off southwards for Spain.  Jean who was helming, very reasonably, interpreted our change of course to be a sudden 180 degree wind shift and some panic followed. All was soon well again.

Sometime that day, we were going so well (in slightly the wrong direction) that someone suggested that we could miss out on Southern Brittany entirely and sail around the outside of Ushant (sort of into the Altantic) and thence stop for a rest in L'Aberwrac'h.
I had a number of concerns about this plan:
1.  We were knackered
2.  We would be arriving in the dark off a rock-strune coast with a malfunctioning plotter
3.  Our poorly engine was now low on fuel
4.  The Bay of Biscay was bad enough without any suggestion of a detour into the Atlantic Ocean
5.  It was a silly idea.

Friday 26th August. We arrived in Benodet and went to sleep.

Saturday 27th August
To Audierne or maybe Camaret or perhaps L'Aberwrac'h.

Sunday 28th August
We arrived in Plymouth.
I wont bore you with the weather, the shipping lanes, the rope around the prop (in the shipping lanes), or any of the other inconveniences associated with wind-powered-sea-travel.........

 

Mid channel.  Doris helming.

..... But we arrived in Plymouth anyway and were happy.