Position: 49:11:94N  02:18:05W

St Helier, Jersey,  The British Channel Islands

Our sail for the short 35 mile distance to St Helier, Jersey in the Channel Islands was accompanied by many ferries plying their way to and from Guernsey, Jersey and various ports in England and France.
We had great expectations for Jersey.

As we entered the waiting dock in St Helier harbor it was obvious that this was a popular destination too! Great stuff!
It was obvious from the 6 and 7 deep rafts that had had been formed along the pontoon.
(For non-sailors, ‘rafting’ is the term for one boat tying up to another boat and so on such that the innermost boat holds to the dock and all the other SIX or SEVEN boats basically rely on his grip to the dock and they have to walk across all the other boats to get to shore.) In this case the there was a matrix of 60 boats tied up this way with just 10 boats tied to the pontoon. ‘Rafting’ is a fact of life for European yachts. It’s not particularly ‘enjoyed’ by anyone but it’s ‘needed’ because of the lack of marinas and ports in the peak season. You can’t really refuse permission to raft up to you either.

We discovered that 27 foots boats get a little wary of 27 ton, 55 foot sailboats wanting to tie up alongside them when they are already number six out on an existing raft.
So would I be too in the same circumstances!
(That was fun. It was just like school children avoiding the teachers eyes in class when they don’t want to be picked on to answer a question.)

Before we could sort ourselves out the harbor master appeared in his dingy and gave us the prime ‘RESERVED’ spot right in front of all the other boats and alongside the pontoon. Perfect.

Then came, one by one ..the flotilla.
28 sailboats touring the Channel Islands together with a ‘RESERVED’ mooring at St Helier – all coming alongside us! We became centre staged and hemmed in on all sides whilst we enjoyed the company of the 28 boat flotilla, 6 of which rafted to us and a further 60 behind us.

Rafting and the Social experiment!
This was the first time we have had more than two boats raft to us.  A raft of 7 boat enhances it’s features enormously. Six boats with 4 to 6 crew each, that’s up to 72 feet walking across your nice new clean teak decking six or seven times a day! (If there are teenage girls on board then this climbs to 12 or 13 times a day as they make their ‘private’ calls onshore!)
All walking above your head. 36 people pulling on your stanchions as they try to get up and down from the boat, black scuff marks everywhere and small pieces of concrete and grit brought on deck from the soles of the shoes. Boat etiquette basically requires crew to take their shoes off whilst crossing another deck, to be quiet and unobtrusive. Yeh right.
So, can you ‘encourage’ crew to do the right thing without being seen as an ogre?
This was time for social experimentation.

1)      Strategically place a pair of deck shoes on the pontoon by the boat gate and watch what happens.

2)      Talk about anything to your neighbors whilst strategically removing your own shoes and placing them on deck and see what happens.

3)      Start cleaning anything on-deck in bare feet with your shoes next to you whilst people pass you as they go for their showers.

The results.
People CAN be trained to do the right thing with a lot of effort via hints. We started from ZERO people taking their shoes off before crossing our boat. We achieved a success rate of 80% plus over the 4 days - whilst we were stationed on the boat. It was clear though that as soon as crews thought no one was watching they got lazy again.
The best results came from people following your lead of taking your shoes off talking with them. Couples follow the lead of their partner.

To insult to injury the shore power didn’t work, the washroom seemed a mile away and as you can imagine our leaving before the flotilla was decidedly not an option. Oh, and it wasn’t a cheap port either.

Overall we found Jersey o/k but not as cute as Guernsey. They did have an amazing bus driver though. This bus driver advised us on the best start location for walking and then took us there after the last people got off his bus!  Great guy!

It takes a great deal of coordination to get 7 to work together as a team. You can imagine the coordination it takes to get 7 boats and 36 crew in a raft to all detach from each other at a particular time in a team effort. So, whilst we (Les) was trying to coordinate everyone a NEW sailboat arrived onto our raft, ignored all the protests, and announced, “..we’ll just be a minute! We just want to go and get bread and milk”. Les nearly smacked him when, in his BBC accent, he told her to, “chill out” and “don’t worry love”.    
..AND they didn’t take their shoes off!

..on to St Malo.  Vive La France!