Guernsey, Cherbourg and Home once more!

If you read our last post you'll know that we had a bit of extra time to kill in Guernsey whilst waiting for a replacement starter motor to arrive. The weather was a bit gloomy, as the photos below show, but we went for a stroll anyway.

Looking over the Little Russell channel

Cute little rock garden. No idea why...

Fish farming in one of the flooded quarries?

Bordeaux harbour

I bet her house pongs of wet dog!!

A call from the Lucas dealership confirmed that the starter motor had arrived - the day after it was ordered. They delivered it to the marina that same afternoon.

I'd hoped to be able to fit it without draining down the cooling system and disturbing the heat exchanger, but I was out of luck. I'd been able to remove the solenoid from the old starter motor, creating enough space in the process to wriggle it out. Unfortunately the one on the new starter was secured with crosshead screws with heads made of cheese. There was no way I could budge them - the heads just burred over when I tried - so what should have been a quick job turned into a 5 hour one!

I took the opportunity to reconnect the calorifier while the system was drained down though, so we have the luxury of hot water once more.

When the time came to test it, all seemed to be well with no leaks from the cooling system. The Volvo's plumbing is a Heath Robinson collection of copper pipes held in place by the location of the parts they link and some rubber seals. I'm amazed it's watertight at all!

So on Wednesday 7th September, 2 days later than planned, we set sail for Cherbourg. The 41 miles was against the wind, but at least we had the tide with us - up to 6 knots of it in the Alderney race - for all but the last 10 miles. We even had a civilised 0850 departure time (we'd have left earlier if we could, but we needed to wait until there was enough depth for us to float over the sill to exit Beaucette).

Cap de la Hague - more gentle with us this time than in the past!

Entering Cherbourg outer harbour. If I don't look behind, the ship won't be there...

Cherbourg was an essential stop to re-provision for the winter (i.e. stock up on cheap wine!). Even with the less favourable exchange rate post Brexit, wine boxes in France are still half the price of their equivalents in England.

With a forecast of SW4 or 5, increasing 6 at times (wind in Beaufort), fair (not wet), moderate (sea state), good (visibility), we set off for Chichester harbour at 0350 (take an hour off that for BST!) on Friday 9th.

I wouldn't choose to do a channel crossing with a F6 on the nose but, with the wind behind us, the apparent wind (the wind across the deck) should be less than 20 knots for most of the time. In the event, we saw no more than 18 knots and often it was quite a bit less than that - so much so that, at times, we had to motor (again!!).

The sea state was moderate as forecast but the swell was coming from abeam, rolling Cyclone around like a metronome. It went in cycles so that, for a few seconds, all was flat calm. Then Cyclone would start to roll gently to one side and then back to the other. The rolling amplitude would continue to increase until she was rolling 20 degrees to one side followed by 25 degrees to the other. And then it would all slowly decrease until it was flat calm once more. Repeat. Repeat. For 14 hours...  

The sun rising over the English Channel

A rather murky St. Catherine's Point (Isle of Wight)

Our (almost) finish line, West Pole off the entrance to Chichester Harbour

We found a vacant mooring in Itchenor Reach and tied up to it for the night. Then, soon after 0800 Saturday morning (BST now) we set off for Chichester Marina. Cyclone will remain there until Saturday 17th when she will take up residence ashore at Thornham Marina for a well earned rest.

We're back home now courtesy of our fantastic neighbours, Janet and Geoff, who not only looked after our house in our absence - including making the gardens (front and rear) look far neater than they ever do when we're at home - but also picked us up from the marina. We are very, very fortunate to have them as friends and neighbours.

Last night we had a takeaway, slobbed on the sofa with a film on the TV and retired to a square bed.

Luxury!!