From there I would go West down the channel, turn the corner and head South for the Med.
Essential, one channel cross (quite enough to satisfy my desire to do that).
But, I heard about the Brest festival and figured I would just do the channel loop the other way (West to East on the French side, cross at a narrow spot to the Isle of Wright and then sail as far as Falmouth, on to the Scilly and then off to the Med).
This would require 2 crosses, but Scilly Isles are pretty far West so that's not really a cross.
A fine plan that we were putting into action when Bill Lowe hooked up with us in Guernsey (for a week or so of sailing).
When I told him of my East to West plan on the English coast he said “Fine, let me out when you get to the Isle of Wright and I'll head home”!
Hmmh...I think Lassie is trying to tell us something (someone tell Bill what that means when he gets back to Florida)!
It turns out that the plan had a minor (ok...perhaps a fatal) flaw...going East to West in the English Channel involves sailing in high winds from the West in strong currents going West (called wind over tide).
In my defense, I had no idea the channel changed directions when I made the plan.
So, discussing this with our new source of local knowledge (where was he when I made the Brest decision?) he suggested we shift up one island that allowed departure in any tide (hope you recall earlier posts) and that we go on the diagonal (outside the shipping separation zone of course) and get as West as possible on the cross.
This put our likely destination at Plymouth, meaning I would miss my goal of sailing to Falmouth, but I would have some coastal cruising going East prior to arrival at the Isle of Wright.
Bummer, if I had known that I would not have gone to Brest to start with.
So, now we would cross on the diagonal, add distance (85nm vs 55), but at least we could do that all in daylight with an early start from Alderney.
Plan made, now to work the weather window.
Oops, if we went to Alderney it would take an additional day, and the weather was favorable for our cross if we left the next day from Guernsey (we would get a rare Southerly backing wind at about 15nm).
New plan, we would depart early in the am from Guernsey for Plymouth....so now check the tide.
Oh oh, we're trapped in by a sill until 12:45pm, meaning that we will only cross part of the channel in the daylight!
Getting the picture?
Nighttime cross (for over half), diagonal, outside the shipping separation zone...seems like I do everything the hard way!
As it went, the winds diminished, causing us to motor for several hours.
I figured out that Falmouth was only an additional 24nm from the position we were at and we changed course for it (of course, that put us on a greater diagonal, but I'd given up on that a long time prior).
We came across the East bound shipping traffic 1st, it reminded me of inbound air traffic at O'Hare.
I wish I had screen shots of all the red arrows (AIS symbols) that were moving across our GPS display!
The further West we went, the more the ships were spread out as they funneled into the separation zone behind us.
Not too bad on the Eastbound traffic, we then encountered the West bound, of course in the dark.
The most worrisome encounter was a ship coming behind us...I was determined to stay on his port side no matter what, but you do want to maintain a steady, predictable course in case they do see you and are planning to take your course into account.
I was able to contact the ship (got his name from AIS...what a great thing!) and he told me he would alter course and cross our stern....not sure how things would have gone had I not gotten in radio contact.
Anyway, the winds came up during the cross, backed and allowed us to make Falmouth under sail, achieving my long time goal of reaching the English shores in my own sailboat!
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