St Peter Port to Brighton
Minka of Southampton - Cruising Log
Edmund Wigan
Thu 23 Sep 2010 14:37
 Leaving St Peter Port we had light winds from
behind us so put up the spinnaker for the first time on this trip. It gave us
just over 6 kts boat speed which took us up to and just through the Alderney
Race. Unfortunately the wind began to die but the tide was going our way at up
to 5kts.
  The ship above decided to overtake us going through
the race. We had to give him a bit of room as he was only going to miss
some isolated rocks by 2 cables.
The shipping was quite heavy crossing the channel
so we made a lot of use of the Automatic Identification System
(AIS).
 You can see Alderney bottom left with Cherbourg
just right of it. We are coloured white on the screen and you can clearly see
the direction of flow each way.The ship crossing in front of us is a Channel
Ferry.In addition to the AIS we had the radar running as not all vessels have
AIS particularly smaller fishing boats. We managed to avoid everything by at
least 0.5nm which was good. We didn't get much sleep.
At about 1100 Brighton came into view. John took us
into the Marina and we went straight onto the berth we left last
November.
 Christina came and picked me up so I could collect
my car from her house and took this photo of the crew.
 For those who don't know John is number 79. We
don't look too bad considering we had been up all night.
Out total mileage was 1,590nm over the ground. Our
time travelling was 14 days 21 hours giving an average speed over the ground of
4.6kts. The shortest distance between the start in Mazarron and the finish in
Brighton is 1,410nm so we travelled an extra 180nm over the ground. This was
largely because of some long tacks out into the Atlantic. In addition,
because of net adverse currents and tides we need to add another 100nm through
the water.
This is my final blog for this trip. I have
arranged to winter Minka in Brighton and have no firm plans at the moment for
next year. During this trip I have had help and friendship from many different
people. In Gijon Lizzie showed me the mountains and introduced me to the locals.
In Gibraltar Colin, Richard and Dan who were thoroughly patronised by the
Yachtmaster examiner certainly deserve a mention and a beer. In Mazarron Gill
and John and their family were great lending me a car and making sure I ate all
Sebastian's snail paella. Finally, Manuel who was always a friendly face in
Mazarron and helped well beyond any expectation in antifouling Minka before we
left.
Best wishes and thank you all.
Edmund and Minka
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