Portland to St Peter Port (Guernsey)

The Channel Islands beckoned. We'd not been since covid struck and kind of miss the place. The idea was to head to Guernsey, get some fuel, enjoy the island, let the little dog run on the beaches and through the woods and then make it up as we go. Probably including Herm, Sark and possibly Jersey as we have not been there in many years.

Planning the trip was fun. We didn't want to go overnight as we had a furry passenger. She has always been fine on longer daytime trips but we didn't want to push things. The tides decreed an earlyish start of 6:30 am but we ought to get some great assistance on the way. The forecast was perfect too, wind of force 4 decreasing to 3 or less and a "slight to smooth" sea state. Perfect motorboating weather. Oh, it was going to be sunny too. 

So, we headed out from the closer eastern entrance of Portland as there was no commercial traffic. The military stuff was all tied up and probably enjoying a lay-in:

Heading out from the harbour, the sun made an appearance and started to burn off the cloud, it was quite atmospheric really:

As you cross to the channel islands, you have to thread your way through the shipping lanes where there is a traffic separation zone.  Stuff going west comes first:

and amazingly we fitted through a gap in the traffic with no course alterations needed:

We were not as close as that picture suggests by the way, about a mile off the tanker.

The tides like to take you east to start with and then back towards the west. We let them do it as it is way more efficient than fighting them twice to try and achieve a straight line to the southern end of the separation zone. You can see where that is by the kink to the west in our course:

Izzy took clearing the traffic in her stride and with her new lion toy in her mouth. It lost its ears though, despite being loved:

Crossing the eastbound shipping lane we were not as lucky but we only needed to change course for one ship, a little 10 degree jink to starboard gave us 3/4 of a mile to play with:

Not the prettiest of things really:

After we cleared the traffic zones, we celebrated what was turning out to be a fast passage with some of Mrs Bishop's home made cake:

In case you are wondering, it was as good as it looks. The weather played ball and so heading more or less south from the Casquets towards Guernsey, we decamped to the flybridge. Our first sunny calm trip up top this year. Izzy was transfixed as Herm and Guernsey appeared and got bigger:

We just beat the Commodore Clipper freight ship into the port and were welcomed back by a friendly face in the harbour dory - he told us that the Morlaix race yachts were in port and that things were "rather manic". He wasn't kidding! The French yotties were rafted four out on the waiting pontoon for the marina and all over the Swan pontoons in the main harbour. We were given a spot on the one harbour pontoon that isn't connected to the shore, ideal with the doglet on board.  ☹  So, the RIB was launched to take her for the regulation pee and then retrieve her. As the harbour guys kindly said they would move us to the walk ashore area once the race yachts went into the marina , we recovered the RIB and later duly moved over. A big water top up and a much needed dinner followed.

The trip took under 10 hours, running at our normal cruise rpm for shorter trips of 1650 rpm or so. The boat was very light on fuel and water so that helped our speed through the water. The bottom was pretty clean too as it wasn't long since our lift out and the weather had been far from sunny. Perfectly calm too, the bumpiest bits were in the edge of the Portland race and when a couple of big patio door sporting fast motorboats came steaming out of St Peter Port throwing up quite a wake. A thoroughly enjoyable trip, the best so far this year.

Maintenance News:

Nothing to report really. One of the Furuno screens in the pilothouse decided to reboot itself during the run (we have a black box job that runs both of them and is the core of the Furuno system). One instance has played that game before but there is a software upgrade that, like every software upgrade ever released, promises to fix everything. They never mention the new bugs that come with it. As it also involves an operating system upgrade for the box and for the plotter on our flybridge, we will leave it for now. Better the devil you know as this devil just restarts one screen on the odd occasion.