..And Home

  A forecast of fresh northerlies in 2 days time prompted to us to take a sparkling NW wind to Guernsey . Navigation was by a folio of 17^th century charts bought at a bookstall in St Malo, and like their modern equivalent – the course took us past Les Roches Douvres.  Should we explore these as well?  No , they were a rock too far ! The tide was dropping like a stone and the weather did not feel settled enough – so we contented ourselves with a close pass , some long distance photos and a secret sigh of relief that we could stick to deep water navigation. Our ancient charts all showed anchorages on the south side of Guernsey – so we slipped into Petit Port at dusk , completely protected from the force  6 Northerly forecast for that night.

    The same charts showed a big bay on the South coast of Alderney , with no corresponding indent on modern charts. I decided that it must refer to   Longey Bay – especially as this  it seemed to be protected by a castle, a common finding in old sailing ship anchorages . The inaccuracy might be explained by the fact that the SW coast of Alderney is “difficult “ and unlikely to have been surveyed by unwieldy !7^th century sailing ships. The trip there ( via a short lunch stop off Sark ) was a brisk beat , tacking in to the bay and anchoring under sail. By and large it was protected , except perhaps for the start of the flood which produced a NE counter current off the mouth of the bay and a popple  which rolled us  about for a while.

For our final day I had promised myself an exploration of Alderney and Burhou before an expected light wind crossing home. With large scale chart in hand and the chart plotter as back up we inched our way around the Island inside most of the rocks – and crabbed across the Swinge to Burhou to await the East going tide. Miraculously a gentle Northerly sprang up at just the right time so we could just about make our course at 5 knots. As the afternoon progressed , so the wind backed and strengthened  so that far from crossing slowly , we ended up thrashing across at 8 knots and were tied up and asleep by 2 am.

  What a nice cruise. Against all the odds , the winds had been kind and  weather had been wonderful . Now it was time for the Fastnet, but that was to turn out to be a rather different story.

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