Channel Islands 2010 - Newton Creek to Cherbourg

So on our Friday night departure we saw a good breeze and a quick beat to Newtown Creek. An early night and an early start for we were up at 05:30. Well when I say “we” I mean me. The Crew decided it was still the middle of the night and stayed in bed. This turned out to be a fatal error for two reasons

1. They missed a glorious sunrise just outside Newtown Creek

2. In not getting up, sea sickness tablets were not consumed early enough and this had fish feeding consequences later on in Note to self always remember the “North Channel” in any serious weather.

No harm done – we sailed all the way but the winds did go round to the NW and we ended up hard on the wind and being effectively single handed (due to Crew fish feeding and a broken Autopilot) I perhaps wasn’t as hot at the Navigation as I should have been but was deliberately up tide so got swept in to Cherbourg. But this did mean we had an interesting experience nearly crossing a “Zone Interdit/Explosifs Immerges” zone on the chart. My French was good enough to know we shouldn’t be there and we tacked clear.

The crew were particularly inventive in the catering depart whilst in Cherbourg finding Rosemary in the bushes in the park outside the marina and adding to a Camembert to make a tasty starter one night. The gods compensated though, by killing the outboard when I refuelled with what must have been some contaminated petrol. Rowing was the order of the day for the rest of the trip.