Dover Apart from our casting off party at we just sat in the marina waiting and entertaining grandson Henry followed by friends and family for “The Last Supper!”

Pics: Being shown round the lifeboat by Harry and then telling Mike and Henry to smile and look at the effect!

Casting off party at Cullin’s Yard

   RTYC Commodore assisting with getting Right Turn back to her berth!

Dover to Cowes Kate leaves RT for a week while Mike takes RT onto Channel Islands.  Awake at 0115hrs, I can hear a breeze picking up. 0130hrs the wind alarm I set goes off, time to get going as the wind won’t last long. Clear of the harbour by 0200hrs and a good NE 4 –5 takes me just past Brighton before fading away.  Want to push on to the Solent to save a night in a marina and to be in position to cross the channel on Friday. Anchored by 1930hrs, Osborne bay, Cowes.

Cowes to Studland Bay Quiet night at anchor. Left at 1100hrs and had a very good sail up wind to Studland arriving at 1630hrs. Great fun sailing through the Cowes Week fleets mustered off the RYS waiting to start. This year the biggest and fastest boat goes to the Russian money. Traced the engine cooling water leak to a pinhole in hose. New hoses in Guernsey!

Studland Bay to Alderney Up early and off by 0300hrs. Must get over to Alderney by 1800hrs or the tide will turn and I’ll never get in before the wee hours. Day starts with some rain but the wind holds all day with some sun later, I make Alderney by 1330hrs and pick up a buoy.

Alderney Pick up new outboard. Small job to change some engine cooling water hoses grows arms and legs while Kate gets to go to Canterbury to see Gruffalo’s Child for Henry’s birthday treat – I’m not scared!

              

Alderney Rain all morning. Brightened a little in the afternoon, took a walk around the town – didn’t take long – everything shut! Frustrated as I can’t order the parts for the engine until tomorrow and the next day delivery talked of yesterday might not happen – island living!

Alderney After much hanging around, finally managed to get parts ordered and delivery is meant to be tomorrow… we’ll see.  Warmed up a bit during PM

Alderney Happy 3^rd Birthday to Henry.  A cold night, need to get south pretty soon. Parts still not in. Kate now flying out on Thurs because she’ll be recovering from spending today at Legoland!

Alderney still waiting!

Alderney the engine part finally arrived and is fitted, much relieved, just a very small leak on the hose that needs replacing. Kate arrives from UK and takes over log writing! So glad to see that the spare part arriving takes precedence over me arriving. It was ever thus!

Alderney to Guernsey left Alderney 0530 for St Peter Port arrived 1045. Moored up on the pontoon, various trips to chandlers in search of the right piece of hose with no joy. So Mike jury-rigs something and we are running again.

Guernsey Waiting in St peter port for some sunshine and wind from the right direction! Fab fish platter lunch at Christies. Yet another trip to chandlers for something else they didn’t stock!

St Peter Port to Lesardrieux, Brittany Mike had us off the pontoon around 6.30 apparently, whilst I took up position on the saloon sofa fighting off my usual first day’s seasickness. Dropped the anchor in the river at Lesardrieux around 15.30 after 44nms. Horrible bumpy sea. But we did manage to agree to put the hour forward to French time at 5pm so we could have Pimms o’clock at 6pm!

Lesardrieux to Trebeurden Once again Mike sails out around 6.30 French time and we drop anchor outside the marina 32nms further along, when I emerge – hopefully, that’s the end of this years seasickness but it was a horribly lumpy ride! We’ve been here before according to the log but neither of us remembers anything about it!

Trebeurden – L’Aber-wrac’h Left at 6.40am and arrived 13.30 after 38nms. Met Mark and son Harry aboard Kindred, a Discovery 55. They had got 2/3rds of the way across the Biscay en route to Lisbon and the ARC only to get seawater pumping into their boat so they decided to sail back to Solent and get the probs they subsequently had with electronics fixed. Hope they get it all sorted in future. They were suffering from the same prob I was a couple of years back when I set myself a timetable which included Ryanair flights from Lisbon only to be foiled by the wind – in my case, too little wind and in their case too much! Lesson No.1 – get rid of timetables! Tied up on inside of visitors’ pontoon for – rule 2 in L’aber-wrac’h – NEVER tie up on the outside, far too much bouncing about from the wash of other boats.

Bay of Biscay crossing to Camarinas Fairly unexciting 3 day crossing apart from lumpy 3^rd night, wind changing direction all the time and fading away completely for hours at a time. Hence, some sailing, some motoring, and some motor-sailing with every different configuration of sails possible apart from twin Yankees – mainly because only one was rigged – so goose-winging first day done with headsail poled out. 2 sets of dolphins jumping around the boat at sunset on 1^st and 2^nd nights. At 14:30 on 1^st day out, because of the tremendous current round Ushent we were very pleased when we did our personal best speed over the ground of 12.4kts! Total some 390nms

 Ushant

Finally dropped anchor at Camarinas around 9:30am.  Always forget how windy it is in this particular little anchorage, completely different outside the bay! Bet some people buying homes here were not happy when they found out its always blowing old boots here! The wind finally drops away and we spend a peaceful night.

 

Camarinas Day of rest, too tired to inflate dinghy and go ashore so started prettying up the bathroom and a bit of tidying up. Another overcast and windy day.

Camarinas to Muros Grey start but finally got a fast sail tacking up the ria at the end when it blew “old boots”! Anchored and stayed put in a very gusty anchorage.

 Spanish Finisterre, the most Westerly point of Europe

Muros Inflated new dinghy and zipped into harbour over lumpy sea, would never have even attempted it in our old Tinker Tramp and 2hp outboard. However, soaked on the way back – Universal Studios poncho resurrected for the next trip ashore!

It’s a very pretty town with 2 great ironmongers (ferretarias) and good supermarket, market  - which will be lovely when it’s finished! -and fish market so we now have 2 lots of fresh gambas and a dorade in the freezer. Also, not to be missed, Louisa’s homemade liquor store. Only downside, no launderette.  It’s a hazard of the cruising life that you spend the first day ashore looking for a launderette or Wifi or gas and, of course, the obligatory chandlery! – and trying to remember the Spanish for each!

So we are re-stored and restored but spent a very windy and bumpy last night at anchor. The most irritating thing about this coast is the flies, which are driving us mad again. I haven’t repaired the mozzie screens yet so we can’t keep them out. Grr!

Muros to Bayona Mike got us underway having had a bit of a struggle to get the anchor up as it was so well dug in from the high wind gusts. Dolphins sighted. Sailed to Bayona arriving after 41nms of very uneventful sail. Anchored in the bay.

Bayona Now the wind has completely gone and none forecast we expect to be here for some days so using the time to lie around in the sun, read and socialise. (Although, it’s still cold enough at night for me to resort to pyjamas and socks!) Mahimahi, a Swedish Cigale 14 with Magnus and Sara onboard are the first to break the ice followed the next day by Island Kea, a Taswell 49 with Margy and Marcus on board.  All 4 on board RT for drinks at Pimms o’clock, followed by Mike falling into the water at the end of the evening in an attempt to lock up our dinghy! The next day we introduce ourselves to Roger and Margaret on Magnetic Attraction and we have a group of new best friends! Discover a Carrefour we didn’t find when we were last here so we are restocked, including some French cheese – as the Spanish ones still only taste, at best, of soap!

End of August and we have travelled 870nms this trip so far, first month away – I wonder how many miles we will have travelled before RT is back in UK again.