Putting on weight

One of the reasons to visit Guernsey is for our annual fuel top up. We calculated that we would need about 4000 litres and that proved to be almost spot on.

With a 2pm slot booked at St Sampsons we headed out avoiding the many tenders from the two liners anchored off the harbour that were busy ferrying folks to and fro.

We had only about 0.8m under the keel as we approached the fuel berth around 1.5 hours before high water. Tide was closer to neaps and so we had to be careful. The pontoon was busy, one boat being fuelled by the Esso truck  (we have only seen that on the quay once before!) and a crane preparing to launch another boat. Kevin, the Rubis man, was on vacation but Marcus his replacement looked after us well.

The crane operation was cowboy central though. Big crane, single hoist point (no spreader bars or frame) and only one of the two strops was tied back to the feeble looking cleats on the sports cruiser that they were launching:

Once the boat ahead of us had finished getting fuel from Mr Esso, they lifted the cruiser over us and into the water:

and then one of the engines would not run properly. All in all something that would make the health and safety experts amongst us go a little bit pink.

We survived, tanked up and headed back to St Peter Port. The trip isn't far as you can see:

When we arrived in Guernsey, we had asked the mooring man if we could have a slot inside the marina because there was no fresh water on the pontoon (and we knew the Morlaix race yachts would be arriving in their droves). The nice harbour guy said that he would try but we didn't hear any more so it seemed not to be possible.

Knowing we were going to head off to get fuel, we asked again, 6 days later. Clint, the rather disinterested harbour man said that "they would see when we came back" and showed his lack of interest in the conversation as he just kept walking past to check our mooring fee receipt as I was talking to him.

We went for a wander around and saw some empty slots in Victoria marina in spots that had the required 2m depth so we popped into the office to ask if we could go onto one of those when we returned later on. We were blessed to find Clint in there who told us that one of the deeper slots was only for yachts (no idea why but...) and that we might get into the corner berth. He then walked away whilst talking to us to hide in another part of the building. How he got a job that is customer facing is beyond us, especially as we have always found all the other harbour team friendly and helpful in the many years we have visited here.

No matter, we think his colleague saw our lack of amusement at his behaviour and when we returned from fuelling in a shoal of racing yachts (the Morlaix race was arriving) we were shown to the little tight corner berth:

A nice move to slip into there avoiding the French yacht near our bow and the brand new Princess motor yacht that you can just see dead astern of us. No matter, shorepower and water on hand so the washing machine was busy....

Putting on weight - yes about 3327 kilos in around an hour. That is some eating disorder we have going on.