We were all psyched up ready for the channel crossing – one of the busiest shipping channels in the world and we were going to head straight over it in a small flotilla of sailing boats – and not from the Dover/Calais side but from the Atlantic side crossing over 100 miles and into what looks like a sea defence set of rocks protecting Paimpol. The forecast was force 8 with rough seas so we wore our motion sickness bands (on the P6 acupuncture point which surprisingly seems to work) and gobbled down crystallised ginger only to find that the race had been postponed and we would find out tomorrow morning. So a day to spend passage planning going through the charts redoing tidal calculations and routes for what might be a daytime passage, whilst listening to the high winds whistling through the boats and the halyards clashing against the masts. When evening arrived we went on a small pub crawl to find out one crew hadn’t been told by their skipper that the 5am early rise had been cancelled too. They weren’t in our class so were not competitors but were still sceptical – we did point out they would find out at 5am tomorrow whether we were telling the truth or not. We returned to the boat with me only getting my bottom wet as I almost fell out of the tender – things were going remarkably well.
Then they didn’t. At all.
The cooker broke down so we had no way of getting hot water, the heads inlet valve also decided to stop working, my lifejacket clamp fell off, our exit from the pontoon was met by a hail of abuse from a gnarly seaman who couldn’t believe the mess that two boats could make floating down the Dart towards his pride and joy, and we had a wonderful kerfuffle at the start of the race in front of the committee boat again and last over the start line. And we were off following a large set of sails across the channel with the wind in the right direction and the tide shoving us eastward. Sixteen and a half hours passage – recalling why I fly to get places.
The waves were growing in size, Gill and I were chatting about music when she said ‘oh I hate Paul McCartney’, when a wave suddenly hit her and she cried out – ‘Christ, it’s a Paul McCartney fan all the way from the Mull of Kintyre’. As the waves grew it became harder to stand at the stern looking after the mainsheet so I slid into the helm seat with mainsheet in hand and what became a seat for the girls when they were helming (the helm stance was quite tiring in the standing position and the sitting position was too low so my Goldilocks solution seemed to work well – yes lapdancing across the channel).
The boat has a heavy and large keel so the waves were hitting it and causing it to go into a bizarre sliding motion akin to a skid which made helming tiring as every seventh wave shoved the entire boat off course. The chart plotter was difficult to read in the light of day but we had the sails in front to keep our interest as well as the rapidly approaching cargo ship.
The cargo ship appeared first as a box on the horizon, Alison took a bearing and we carried on exchanging anecdotes. The box grew in size and Alison took another bearing. This time the anecdotes stopped as she said we are on a collision course. With the box growing ever larger forming a clear image of a rapidly moving cargo ship and the bearings still confirming a collision (with which we were almost certainly going to lose out) there followed a heated debate on Collision Regulations (COLREGS) and Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) followed by a stream of abuse punctuated with ‘arrogant, incompetent and fuckwit’ which for once didn’t seem to be directed at me.
All hell broke loose at once, I was clipped on at the stern hanging onto the backstay, as the girls handled the sails and Charles whirled the wheel around and we were now parallel with the cargo ship and into its prop wash. ‘This is much better than Alton Towers’, I screamed, with an eye on the life raft as she heeled over. The boat righted itself and we watched the cargo ship wend its way wetward. Using AIS and my handheld GPS track I was able to work out which ship it was and have a photo of it on my desktop to remind me of our seaprox (along with an RAF tornado which our microlight had an airprox with) – recalling that Burt Bacharach song – why do cargo ships and fighter jets suddenly appear, everytime you are near..
The girls and I helmed our way south as Charles snoozed in readiness for the tough part of the route – the night route through the rocks of the North Passage. We watched the sun set and the red moon rise over the water as hour by hour passed in a cycle of helming and chatting and singing or humming our way through John Martyn’s repertoire. It was a full moon which gave a bit of light but there was little to follow on the horizon apart from the occasional sail appearing and disappearing with the waves. The eastbound channel ships, which were not on a collision course, passed to the front and behind us or straddled in a long line into the distance. The only lights were the moon and our navigation lights and the instrument lights (the chart plotter was moved into night mode).
Alison went to grab some sleep and after ten minutes I decided this would be a good chance with Charles on deck to grab an hour before the navigation nightmare starts with our waypoint Frog1. I discovered Alison in my bunk (it was a secure bunk so you don’t fall out) and the choice was a rear secure bunk which looked a bit to narrow, the forecabin which was bouncing up and down or one of the insecure bunks. Wedging myself into an insecure bunk I kind of drifted in and out of sleep – woken by MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY and PAN PAN PAN calls, until I was unwedged and cramping and moved over to the bunk under Alison. I managed to wake her up as I was thrown over onto the bunk and bounced off the wooden side of it. With one dubarry on and one off and a lifejacket on and off at the same time I managed to flatten her clothes and snore away for a short while before being launched onto the other side. I decided to go for the forecabin and was fast asleep until I thought we were sinking with a MIKE MIKE MIKE call.
It turned out that Gill needed some sleep and there were some navigaitonal points ahead that someone who had done the passage plan could help with. I now had to try to get my other dubarry boot on which was not wanting to – this was in the pitch dark on a rolling boat. Next the life jacket which turned out to be impossible due to a clamp coming off, and the next one I had problems with trying to get the clip closed – finally I was ready and realised I desperately needed to pee. So it was time to unlock the head door and throw myself in on the next roll and unlock it before I was thrown out again. That was when in the pitch dark I realised that my flaccid penis was somewhere under my lifejacket, waterproof jacket, waterproof trousers (with locking zips all going in different directions), my tight pair of Bear Grylls shorts and bamboo underwear. I also had to lift the seat cover, seat and try and pee in the right direction whilst being thrown about, before attempting to get the right seacocks open and closed and pumped. The PAN PAN PAN call turned out to be a women in a small boat with a broken rudder and she was being rescued by helicopter. At least we still had a working rudder.
I stayed in between the chart table and the deck. There were some issues. We had a passage plan that said if it was dark we choose at Frog 1 whether we have sufficient lights to go through the North Channel (which someone had mentioned over drinks was closed) or our first choice was in from the east down a well lit passage. However the chart plotter had been preset to the route and we were now sailing down the North Channel with rocks on all sides and with cardinal buoys all unlit and with lighthouses disappearing due to wave height making it almost impossible to count them for recognition. The chart plotter and GPS took this moment to die, of course.
I had my handheld GPS and I had the charts and started to make suggestions. The rocks and presence of sandbanks and steadily decreasing depth were of concern and I strongly suggested that we should go onto engine to make any progress as tacking with rocks yards away would not be good. Alison helmed bravely with a North West wind making life even more difficult. We started the engine which didn’t start. Great. Battery switched over and we were good to go. My GPS batteries, of course, chose this moment to go losing the backlighting of the screen so I had to use the chart table red light to roughly see where we were in relation to an invisible, in the dark, 193 degree transit. We were on it and motoring down, saw the white buoy we were looking for, and knew we were safe as morning broke and we saw other yachts at safe anchor.
We passed the finish line, retired due to using engine having crossed the channel and beaten by rocks and lack of lights in the last mile. If we had pressed on we could have been first in our class – yet again we could have also been sunk. We followed the well buoyed channel to the Paimpol locks, were locked in to the harbour and tied up on a pontoon and broke out he whisky. The girls announced their departure from the boat and I joined them in the abandoning ship as it wouldn’t have made any sense to rely on me as an incompetent crew and I figured Charles would press gang a complete crew off one of the boats that seemed to break rudders regularly. Three quarters of a bottle later of Highland Park and some fruit cake – the girls and I crowded into the forward bunks and snored our way through to lunch where we discovered Kir Breton (Kir and Breton cider), spinach crepes and mussels with chips.
Paimpol is a jolly town however it is a bugger to escape from. We went along to the tourist office to ask how to leave, an unusual request I grant it. The only way out was a 7 hour 3 change train journey in the opposite direction and ending up in St Malo where a ferry or flight could take us back to blighty. We were settled on an early morning departure leaving Charles to welcome his new crew and for us to start the long trip home. Charles had tickets for the evening so we all settled up our different accounts and polished off more Kir Breton and munched our way through the pheasant as I chatted to a crew from Guernsey. That was where one crew suggested that the skipper of the Lutine was press ganging as they needed more crew so we met the skipper and volunteered and in a moment of madness he agreed and took us on. We had to be on the boat at 0815.
