Position:  50:19:79N   03:33:16W

Dartmouth via the Race at Portland Bill

 

 

 

 

..hmmm, it’s almost worth just staying here and have few more sea bass dinners and crab salads.

 

To get to Dartmouth, our next destination, we had to pass around the notorious Portland Bill Race and all the sailing guides let you know one thing – you must really understand the charts and time the transition right! Madam Zara, the clairvoyant wasn’t much help to us so we just had to take a deep breath, open the almanacs, consult the companion guides, take a pencil and paper to the charts and use our grey matter for ourselves. Most of the headlands along the English Channel have some sort of strong tidal associated with them as the tides rush up through the Channel and back again and this particular Portland Bill headland is considered as the most interesting one. In the centre of the race the currents have been known to reach 10 swirling knots – two south going streams roar down either side of Portland for 10 hours out of every 12 and hit each other at ‘the race’.

 

All we had to do was to choose whether to take the narrow inside passage close to the shore (and the rocks) and save a good hour or two or take the much longer outside route and then depending on the route, time our departure from Weymouth so that we both rounded the race at slack water’ish and made use of the west going tidal stream to speed our way to Dartmouth. 

 

We often listen out on C16 even when we are in dock (sad, isn’t it). This time, the day before we had decided to leave we heard over the radio of a fishing vessel in the inside passage talking to the coastguard - with a broken engine. The discussion involved the race beginning to catch the vessel, the launching of lifeboats, using other vessels in the area - all before he managed to get his engine going again. Then we listened to his progress to safety and back to Portland Harbour

 

We decided to take the longer route to be safe (the boat is called ‘Timeless’ after all) and not to risk the pot lines or the rocks.

We decided we had to leave dock at about 90 mins before HW Dover.

 

When we left dock at about 10.00 am we noticed at least another 3 yachts following us. They must have been reading our notes over our shoulder! There is something really nice about other skippers also determining the same result as yourself, right. All we had to hope is that they were going to head in the same direction as us.

 

As we headed out of the bay we noticed the other boats started to peel off and head through the inside passage – “scaredy cats” follow me!

Unfortunately, the wind was non-existent so it was looking like it would be a motoring cruise.

Anyway, as we rounded the eastern cardinal buoy we could see the race building safely to our starboard a mile away – we also noticed that the current had built to over 11/2  knots in our direction even where we were. As we passed the ‘Shambles’ western cardinal buoy we noticed that the other yachts were now way ahead and the water between us in a confused mess!

(Oh, what is the phrase? "Get two boats together and you have a race?”).

 

As it happens the Portland race was a non-event. The sea for us was smooth, the wind less than 4 knots and the sun shone – so it was time for a cup of tea and bacon sandwiches.

 

There are few things as boring as a smooth sea, no wind, and hazy visibility so you can’t see the scenery very well – this was us. But the boat just slides through the water, the engine is as quiet as any marine engine I have ever heard and we had well over 1 1/2 knots of current with us. The net result was a SOG of often 9 knots with the engine just over 1800 revs. Oh, I had a 2 hour nap and we soon overtook those yachts that took the inside passage (not that I’d noticed of course).

 

What a great grand entrance to Dartmouth Harbour!