Weymouth to St Peter Port (Guernsey)

A typical compromise trip. To take best advantage of the tides, we ought to leave at about 1 am (ouch). To take best advantage of the weather window that was promised, leave about 3 am. To be able to see the forest of tiny pot markers outside the harbour as we leave and avoid them - leave when there is a little daylight at 4:30am. We did the latter...... Better safe than sorry as they say.

The 4 am alarm clock wasn't at all welcome. Especially as our extra crew member had a disturbed night thanks to rowdy drunks yelling at each other around the harbour. Weymouth seems to attract more than its fair share of such folks on a Saturday night, there were several police meeting the trains and checking people out when Anne arrived. Clearly, they had been tipped off about her.

Still, a glorious sunrise made the departure much easier:

The crossing was fine. A bit bumpy around the edge of the Portland Race of course but then just a 5 foot swell with some irregular wind induced waves on top - nothing more than a couple of metres high. Our newly overhauled stabilisers just laughed at them. Anne did well on watch, for about 5 of the 11 hours we were underway. That was until the crew gave her some red berry tea which provoked a violent reaction for about 3 minutes. Such a waste of breakfast. She was fine almost immediately afterwards though - amazing recovery powers.

We cruised a little faster than normal to try and optimise the tides that we faced - 1800rpm once mid channel compared to the most fuel economical 1475 or so that is our normal pace. With so little diesel on board, and a relatively clean hull, 1475 was giving us about 6.5 knots and 1800 gave 7.4. However, the extra 0.9 knot used about 45% more fuel but saved us from pushing a strong tide around Guernsey so overall for the trip it was not such a penalty in fuel burn.

We had a first - we crossed the shipping lanes (OK, for the pedants, the traffic separation scheme) with no course or speed alterations at all. We managed to slide between two gaggles of big guys (7 in each) going east and westbound it was pretty quiet. Anne is a good luck charm and needs to join us on all future channel crossings. We promise to throw the red berry tea away.

The sun came out to welcome us to St Peter Port (as did the wind - gusting 35 knots which is why a later departure from Weymouth would have been bumpy!) Once settled in we enjoyed the harbour views:

Stats and maintenance news:

For those who are interested, there was no maintenance to report. The big Lugger ran happily. The new navigation PC also ran fine but the Maxsea software again lost the link to the charts that run in the Furuno kit. It still displayed all the other data and AIS graphics so it was useful anyway. As always (tempting fate here!) the Furuno kit was rock solid.

The trip took about 11 hours and we burned an unusually high for us 130 litres of diesel. Still, since we are about to fill up at under 50p a litre, the savings compared to tanking in the UK make it all worthwhile, As does the lovely island of Guernsey itself.