Weymouth to St Peter Port

Well, the usual story. A need to leave early morning to make the best advantage of the tides as it was springs meant our guests had to drag Archie out of his bed when he was fast asleep to walk him around Weymouth in the dark. He was not at all impressed! Then we departed just after first light.

There had been a few days of stiff NE / E winds and so we knew that the first part of the run would be the bumpiest. We even managed to get the anchor wet as we pushed out of the harbour and into the remaining swell.

Turning south to run alongside Portland Bill was a little bit bumpy and Irene (the never been out of sight of land on their yacht yet sailor) and Archie were pretty quiet. Once we were clear of the Bill, things settled down a lot and continued to improve as per the forecast all the way to St Peter Port. The strong spring tides gave us a cross track error of over 6 miles to the east and then helped to unwind it all. Heading down the Little Russel channel off Guernsey, the stream also meant we were flying (OK, flying for a Nordhavn) at 10 plus knots.

An 1800 rpm cruise with little fuel on board and a nice clean bottom (boat, we cannot speak for the crew) meant a 9.5 hour run berth to berth. 1800 rpm was picked to try and get a fair tide up the side of Portland Bill and then from the Casquets rocks down to Guernsey. It worked pretty well, despite our "rough and ready" calculations the night beforehand.

We were amazed to see plenty of space in the other harbour and so happily berthed and celebrated John, Irene and Archie's first visit to the place. Archie celebrated with a large wee of course.

Maintenance News:

Nothing to really report. The stuffing box on the main shaft, which had been adjusted several times to get the correct rate of leakage to ensure that it stayed cool since the shaft was pulled at Hamble Point, finally settled down and behaved properly.