12 July – Roscoff – St Peter Port
Departure Time 1130. Arrival Time 0300
Distance 75nm
Andrew and myself had an appointment with the Douane at 1000hrs on the morning to have our passports stamped out of France. This was straightforward and they were very helpful. We slipped lines at 1130 and the two of us headed out of the harbour for the 75nm trip back to St Peter Port. Timing was not ideal as we would be headed by the tide until we had got past Les Triagoz to our port side. However we would be arriving at the southern end of Guernsey as the tide was push us up the southern end the Little Russel. A big concern was lobster pots off Guernsey as we would be arriving in the dark – but not much we could do about this.
As we go outside the harbour entrance there were some fairly sizeable waves and the wind was gusting up to 22kts from the NW. We decided to put in a reef at this point and with this wind we made better than expected speed over the ground. We went into a 2 hour watch system which is the same as I use with Gillian. Hourly log was kept with the usual eye on voltage when we were not under engine. I was hopeful that if this wind and direction kept up we would make both good time and minimum use of engine. No sooner had I thought this the wind decided to die on us just south of Les Triagoz – so it was a slow 3-3.5kts motor sail until we had got north of the isolated rocks.
Dinner was tuna and pasta with a couple of eggs beaten in and some sweetcorn. We were both getting tired after a series of night sails and early mornings as well as an unseasonable drop in temperature for July. It therefore tasted very good at 2000hrs at night. Darkness soon fell and there were few boats around. There was one large sailing yacht to the west of us who had gone outside of Les Triagoz and were making good progress. Other than that we were alone in the dark. Not even any fishing vessels about. There were times when we could sail and others when we had to motor.
By midnight the lights at the southern end of Guernsey were visible as was the lighthouse on our starboard side from the Plateau Des Minquiers.
The sailing yacht to our west anchored in Icart Bay and I was tempted to follow them but this would have meant more engine use the next day which I wanted to avoid. So we motored sailed up the channel to St Peter Port and berthed on the waiting pontoon outside the inner harbour to await daylight to refuel and for sufficient tide over the sill to go inside. I knew I would be here for a couple of days and wanted to be connected to mains to keep the batteries going.
Purrfect Tale 