Passage to L'Aber'Wrach
Aquila
Alan and Sarah Bennett
Fri 23 May 2014 12:40
The crew duly arrived at Poole Yacht Club as promised (from Scotland, Birmingham and Compton Valance), and we sailed as planned (and fully stored) at 1945 on Wednesday to catch the ebb round Durlston Head. The wind was as forecast: once round Durlston Head the SE force 3 gave us a broad reach for the first 3 or 4 hours, but then the front went through, giving us very heavy rain and fickle zephrys as Portland was abeam at midnight. However by 0400 it returned, and thereafter gave us 18 hours or so of cracking sailing.
Apart from getting rather wet from the rain, the highlights of the first 24 hours were: Sarah’s pre-prepared stew for dinner – fantastic; two FAA helos firing night tracer at an indistinguishable target (don’t think it was us!); the wind, when it returned at 0400 on Thursday morning giving us over 7kts through the water; crossing the shipping lanes in daylight, with all ships obeying the rule of the road as they should; Ken’s demon eyesight, spotting ships way beyond a range that could reasonably be expected; Gilbert, who was pumping amps galore after his winter refit; bacon and eggs for breakfast – you get the idea.
Dusk on Thursday 22nd found us with some 30 miles to run to @objective 1’ - the northern entrance to Le Four channel (between Brittany and the offshore island of Ushant)Come 220. Options at this stage were to keep going through the night; anchor half way down Le Four channel; or to drop into L’Aberwrach. Come the 2200 watch change, with rain increasing and the wind now going very fickle, we decided on the last of these 3 options. Midnight found us with 10 miles to run to the Libenter buoy (marking the start of the entrance through the off-lying rocks of L’Aberwarach) in 1nm viz due to torrential rain. We found the Libenter buoy ok, but then it got a bit ‘interesting’ – suffice to say we should have dropped the mainsail before getting into sheltered water (skipper had hoped the rain would have eased by then), and the poor viz and some dodgy electronics (echo sounder playing up) caused the skipper’s planned ‘low key pilotage’ to ratchet up a couple of notches. However, all’s well that ended well, and we eventually picked up a buoy off L’Aberwrach marina at 0315. The subsequent McAllan Gold (courtesy of Ken) went down a real treat!