Saint-Valery-sur-Somme to Saint-Valery-en-Caux

The 20th century history of the Somme is well known but, to quote Tom Cunliffe from the Shell Channel Pilot “It is not common knowledge, however, that in 1066 Duke William embarked at St-Valery for his adventure to ‘put t’breeze up the Saxons’ or that St Joan of Arc was brought here from Le Crotoy by her English captors.”

That was my mistake. Settled comfortably alongside in the port of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme I read the information in the Pilot. Phrases such as “skippers of deep-draught yachts may find their characters expanded by the experience of arrival and, in particular, departure”; “it cannot be overstressed that each buoy must be ‘ticked off’ by number. Miss one out, and you are stumped!”; “the buoy tender moves some of them daily”; “don’t be surprised if it sends you almost onto the beach”; “You can’t get out until a couple of hours before HW, yet you have to punch the flood all the way to the entrance”; “You don’t want to be punting around halfway out on a falling tide, but leaving before the tide is ready for you is even more unwise”; “There are one or two humps in the bottom in the first few hundred metres outside the marina which can lead to heart failure in the weak of constitution”; “The flood is so strong that it will set you sideways easily and if you don’t stay close to the wall to port, you may run horribly aground in a very strong current”; and finally “go for it like a fisherman when your moment comes, with all the revs you can muster”. Add to that lot Graham’s account of his experience in the approach – see his comment on my previous post – and I was starting to feel decidedly nervous about our departure!

Fortunately all was without drama – or so we thought – and a little over 6 hours later we tied up in the Jehan-Ango marina at Dieppe.

En route to Dieppe

Dieppe harbour entrance

Dredger in Dieppe harbour entrance

The Newhaven Dieppe ferry. A daily service began in 1848!

After erecting the orangery and having our showers Jo mentioned in passing that she’d mopped up a little puddle of water from the saloon sole (floor). Slightly concerned, I lifted one of the boards to look into the bilge and discovered that it was completely flooded!

They say a frightened man with a bucket makes the best bilge pump (a bilge pump, as its name suggests, is a pump that sucks water from the lowest point in the boat – the bilge – and ejects it overboard) but I must have come a close second as I worked the pump handle in the orangery whilst watching gallon after gallon of water splash overboard!

Thankfully the level went down and stayed down, so the next place to look was under the engine (any liquids in this area are contained there – up to a point – so that oil etc. can’t contaminate the bilges). This area was also full to overflowing with water and had to be bailed out by hand with a small Tupperware container and a sponge. Once again, thankfully, it remained dry after being emptied. So what next? A glass of wine obviously! It was gone 6pm so there was nothing else for it….

After a good nights kip I set to work to find out where the water had come from. As there had been no further ingress overnight it had to be something to do with the engine running. It was salt water (there was no loss of water from the engine’s sealed cooling system) so it can only have come from one of 2 sources;

• the raw water cooling system (unlike a car which uses cooling air passed through a radiator to cool the contents of its sealed cooling system, a marine engine pumps sea water through a heat exchanger. Here, heat from the sealed cooling system is lost to the sea water before it is ejected out through the exhaust system)

• the propeller driveshaft seal

There was only one way to find out which and that was by observation.

Once the engine was running, the open end of a small plastic hose was seen to be pumping water into the boat at a very impressive rate. Given that we’d had to run the engine for much of our trip from Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, it was therefore unsurprising that it’d made a pretty good stab at flooding the boat!

Without going into too much detail, an engine installed below the waterline – as ours is – has to have a syphon break installed in the sea water cooling system. If it didn't, there would be a danger of water continuing to syphon into the system once the engine had been switched off. If this happened water could eventually find its way through open exhaust valves into the engine itself, with disastrous consequences.

Unfortunately if, as in our case, the anti-syphon valve sticks open when the engine is running, the water pump merrily pumps sea water out through the valve as well as through the heat exchanger etc.

Luckily our valve had the aforementioned small plastic hose fitted to it. Otherwise the water would have simply sprayed out all over the engine – including over the alternator and starter motor….

A quick removal, dismantle, clean, reassemble and all was well. The engine ran sweetly and the sea remained outside the boat. Result!

Rob in the dog house again! Nothing whatsoever to do with the text!

And so what of Dieppe itself?  Well it's certainly had an eventful history since 1030 when the Abbey of Mont Ste-Catherine-de-Rouen acquired the area for an annual rent of five thousand smoked herrings! Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed from here in 1524 to found what later became New York and early emigrants to Canada used the port too, establishing links with the French colony there that endured long after the French lost Canada to the British in 1759.

More recently, Dieppe was the location for Operation Jubilee, which is now commemorated in the square du Canada at the foot of the chateau (this originally commemorated the role played by Dieppe sailors in the colonization of Canada).

The Dieppe raid on the 19 August 1942 was the only large scale assault on the coast of German occupied France prior to the Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944. Entrusted primarily to Canadian troops, its objective, to be completed in one day, was to test the feasibility of seizing a harbour intact - considered at the time to be a prerequisite to the landing of the vast Allied force needed to liberate Europe. Of the 6,000 soldiers who embarked from the English south coast, 5,000 were Canadian. The remainder were British commando troops, 50 American Rangers and 20 Free French. Heavy losses were incurred and valuable lessons learned. According to Lord Mountbatten "for every soldier who died at Dieppe, ten were saved on D-Day". The channel ports were shown to be too heavily fortified to be vulnerable to frontal attack and the invasion plan was changed to one that required the amphibious landing armies to bring their own harbour with them.

It was the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division who ultimately liberated Dieppe, on 1 September 1944.

The monument pictured below commemorates the (Canadian) Essex Scottish regiment's sacrifices in Dieppe and thereafter until final victory in 1945. At precisely 1300 local time each year on 19 August, the sun aligns with the maple leaf cut-away in the monument and illuminates the maple leaf inlaid in the base on the ground, commemorating the end of the raid on Dieppe. I found that rather poignant.

Monument commemorating the Essex Scottish regiment's sacrifices. The inlaid maple leaf is just to the right of the shadow 

Cliff scaled by some of the troops

Red Beach - the beach attacked by the Canadians - with the harbour entrance in the distance

The chateau with the square du Canada in the foreground

Dieppe originally had 7 town gates, 5 of which faced the sea, that were built in the 15th century. All but one of these was demolished, together with the ramparts which linked them together, when the town was modernised in the 19th century. It's hard to believe that could ever happen now. Where was "French Heritage"?!

Les Tourelles - the last surviving gateway and listed in 1886 as an historical monument

Plaque commemorating the export of young female breeding stock to Quebec!

Renoir, Monet and Oscar Wilde drank here (amongst others)

Bassin Duquesne - used primarily by fishing boats

Jehan-Ango marina. Cyclone's top right!

The marina frontage

A better shot of Cyclone!

Le Pollet - traditionally the area where fishermen and sailors dwelt

Jehan-Ango marina from the church of Notre Dame de Bon-Secours

Notre Dame de Bon-Secours

Plaques inside the church commemorating those lost at sea. Very sobering

The Jehan-Ango marina in Dieppe is not to be recommended for a good night's sleep. The boat didn't stop moving in the 3 days and nights we were there and the creaking of lines, accompanied by the clanking of the nearby pontoon to which a tug was tied, were a constant companion. On one particularly bad night we were continually jostled in our berth as poor old Cyclone snatched at her lines. 

We were therefore ready to depart at 0730 on 22 April for the locked harbour of Saint-Valery-en-Caux and a good night's sleep! The trip of just 16 miles took us 4 hours because we had to sail against the tide in order to reach Saint-Valery-en-Caux whilst there was enough depth to enter. It was an uncomfortable downwind (what there was of it!) trip and once again we were required to motorsail for part of it. I'm pleased to report that, on this occasion however, the sea remained outside of the boat!

Saint-Valery-en-Caux

Saint-Valery-en-Caux harbour entrance

The lifting bridge that provides access to the marina

The lifting bridge from our berth

We've yet to explore Saint-Valery-en-Caux as it's raining and blowing a houlie outside!

Thanks for reading.