Drying out in Camaret
ULA
John & Jackie Richards
Mon 4 Aug 2008 09:26
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Position: 048:16.766N 004:35.350W
Holiday-'a relaxing break from everyday
life'
Sailing - ' a pleasant way of spending a
holiday'
The Beneteau marketing brochure for our boat looks
inviting. Several beautiful people, immaculately dressed in white, enjoying a
lovely days sail in calm seas and beautiful sunshine.........
Fast forward to 4am 3 August. John, Laura and me in
full wet weather gear, mid English Channel en route from Falmouth to Camaret,
SW5, heapy seas and incessant, soaking drizzle. We had left Falmouth in the
sunshine around 4.30pm on the promise of the wind going more westerley. Given
the forecast we had decided dinner would be a simple affair and had stocked up
on tesco sandwiches, chocolate bars, sweets and bottled drinks. Plenty of 'E'
numbers to keep us awake! At 9pm we started our watch system and Laura and I
were up on deck while John tried to get some sleep. By this time it was going
dark and had started to rain resulting in poor visibility so we were sailing
with the radar on. There were no stars and it was slightly eerie seeing the
white crests of the waves illuminated in our navigation lights as they
rolled in towards us. This pattern continued through the night as we changed
watches every 3 hours. The conditions meant no-one got very much sleep though.
We then had several hours playing dodgems in the shipping lanes-fortunately by
then the viz had improved and we had Laura (Hawkeye!) on deck.
At 6.30am we had a surprise visit from some
dolphins who played around us for a little while and a bit later John noticed
that we had unintentionally managed to catch a stray fish during the night. It must have landed on our decks with a
wave.
As we approached our waypoint off the Chenal du
Four John radioed Libertad who were within a few miles of us and having an
equally great time...! The viz in the Chenal du Four was down to 200m at times
in the fog/drizzle. We arrived wet and tired in Camaret around 1.30pm where the
wind was gusting a Force 7 by then - great for berthing!
After a much needed shower,sleep and a spag bol we
ended up in an Irish (yes, Irish!) bar in Camaret having a few beers with the
Libertad crew before crashing out.
Today is sunny, we are drying out and the forecast
appears to be getting better...........
Jackie
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