St Peter Port to Dartmouth

Thinking that we were in danger of spending more on navigation bulbs than fuel, we checked the nav lights the evening before departure. Guess what, the stern light had blown again! After fitting one of the two new spares purchased in Guernsey, we found that the bulbs in the 24v boxes bought from ASAP supplies were not all 24v bulbs. One was a 12v in the wrong box hence the almost instant failure. The others must have just been very low quality. Unusual for ASAP, normally their stuff is fine. Let's see how the ones bought in Herm Seaways perform.....

Heading back across the channel meant another stupid o'clock departure to get over the cill in Victoria Marina and take the tide with us around Guernsey. The nice sunrise, pretty calm seas and big tidal help made the start of the trip very pleasant indeed.

Crossing the traffic that was heading for the shipping lanes we had a few diversions to make especially for the Clipper Newark.

We made the obligatory clear and visible course alteration to pass astern of him by just over half a mile. Then, about 10 minutes later, he decided to alter course towards us, almost certainly just following his pre-planned route. It was not at all seamanlike - especially as he was officially the "give way vessel". We made another, this time huge, course alteration to pass astern of him and then the watchkeeper on the bridge must have woken up to what he had done as he quickly resumed his original course - see the nice wriggle on his AIS trail:

That was one of the worst pieces of watchkeeping that we've witnessed from a commercial guy so far.

The wind picked up a little in mid-channel and we had some chunkier waves coming in on the port quarter so the stabilisers were called into action. Nothing dramatic though, still a good crossing. Arriving in Dartmouth (after a little wing engine exercise and a good wide open throttle burn for the main engine) we were pleased to find space and plenty of it on the mid-river pontoons.

The one just below the "Higher Ferry" has the best views possible of the town and river we reckon:

even if the perspective of this panoramic shot makes the boat look a long way off the pontoon it was tied up to!

A good trip, about 10.5 hours underway and no real drama apart from the pesky shaft brush that started making noises again at slower rpm settings. Major surgery beckons!