Weymouth to St Peter Port (Guernsey)

After enjoying Weymouth  for a day (the third furry crew member particularly enjoyed the beach) and even starting on the polishing marathon that the beginning of each season brings, the captain went to help Andrew remove the stabiliser fins from his Nordhavn 43 which was out of the water in Portland. The job went pretty well until the careless captain did the "holding a fin up and twisting his body to push the container propping the fin from underneath out of the way" thing. His back responded and told him off with a big twinge. No more help was proffered, instead a bus back and lots of exercises to help relieve the muscle spasm and resulting ability to walk like a ruptured duck.

Polishing stopped as did a plan to leave for Guernsey, a couple of extra days were spent in Weymouth much to the delight of the beach addicted third crew member who also managed to destroy her new toy quite quickly:

We were entertained by the arrival of the Sea Cadets training ship Jack Petchey. We've seen her in several locations and every time they make a total meal out of berthing her, even once a line is ashore to motor against. Plenty of rushing out of the pilothouse, looking, issuing instructions to the poor guy on the pontoon / crew handling the lines, rushing back in and doing "stuff" with the engines that never brings the boat alongside. Getting her to this state took many minutes:

We think the Sea Cadets have built the least manageable boat going, based on all we have seen. We would never be brave enough to critique the way they handle her. They are professional teaching types.

The forecast for a motorboat cross channel trip just got better and better. So much so that we enjoyed the calmest ever crossing - and we've made this trip many many times over the years. Departing Weymouth at a civilised hour, in the sun and with a true wind speed of 4 knots showing was a treat:

The sail training ship Royalist was in harbour too:

looking very freshly painted and spoodled. She followed us out to sea for what we guess was a trip purely under motor.

The route over to Guernsey:

The S curve is the usual "letting the tide take us" thing - the extra kink to the east was not a surge in the tide but was necessitated by the untimely arrival of Clipper Odin heading for the separation zone which forced us to divert around her stern:

That is a 0.8 Nautical Mile separation in case you are interested. The ship was off to the UAE, think our Guernsey plan is way nicer.

As we approached the eastbound ship area, so a gaggle of big guys came after us. Amazingly with no course alteration we just trundled through the pack:

As the tide turned we got help down past the Casquets and towards Guernsey. We always love heading towards an island and seeing the coastline appear as that grey line on the horizon then watching the details of the place slowly become visible. It seems that Patrick the penguin and Kylie his "mate" enjoy that too. At least they looked riveted by the views:

Heading down the Little Russel channel to St Peter Port we had a scare. We were avoiding one pot marker when we heard a bump. Engine into neutral, boat seemed OK, behind us a pot marker popped up then sank again below the water as the tide pulled it under. Very lucky. Why fishermen are allowed to put tiny markers that get dragged under completely by a non spring tide in the direct deep water channel down to St Peter Port is a thing of mystery. And frustration. And nearly disaster.  We feel another rant coming on about how unsafe this is. In fact chatting to a local boater he also complained about the same stupid tiny marker.

That didn't dim our happiness at arriving in St Peter Port though. Love the place, plenty of happy memories (it was a favourite spot to visit when we had holidays that were constrained by work!) The welcome by the harbour man in his little dory was friendly and very helpful. He put us on the pontoon they use for cruise liner passengers when they are brought ashore by tender. Hence we had a walk ashore spot for Izzy the furry third crew member as the harbour pontoons had not been connected to the shore yet..She has steadfastly refused to use the astroturf and didn't even seem in a hurry to find some grass ashore. Almost 12 hours of bladder control after having two puppies. Amazing. Mind you, she and the crew had been enjoying some snoozing and cuddles en route:

The run was in almost perfect conditions, took just over 10.5 hours and caused remarkably little stress. The verdict on the new electronics - positive so far and from the crew as well. The functionality and ease of use of the TZT2 Furuno system is good.  Little things like the route planning and AIS target handling are so much better than we had before. Still haven't experimented with the radar yet, that will be a challenge for the next trip. Think we will need a tutorial from Captain Rae who is a bit of a trainspotter about the stuff. He recounts stories about using radar when he was flying Lightning fighter planes. Identifying and reacting to things at around Mach 2 (around 1,500mph) must be harder than at 6.5 knots.(around 7.5 mph).

Our morning after arrival view of the harbour was a little different to normal thanks to the spot on the cruise liner pontoon:

You can see the entrance to the visitor marina that we will not try to go into on this visit - neap tides means that on a couple of days we would not be able to get out over the cill even at high water. We don't like being trapped.

Maintenance news:

The big Lugger behaved just fine.  The genset started when we needed it to prepare dinner. We have to investigate why the Pyrometer (exhaust gas temperature reading for the main engine - remember that this has a dry exhaust) is not working now. Initially we thought that a wire had been dislodged when the Maricom guys had the panel out for the electronics work. That was checked and all was well. Now we think the wiring to the sender in the exhaust was damaged by a guy from an insulation manufacturer who wanted to use our boat for measurements to make up new insulation for another 47. Although we asked that none of our nice new lagging was disturbed, he clearly did so as some of the fixings had been retied differently. NOT AMUSED! So much for doing good deeds.