THE JOURNEY HOME

The forecast was for S 3-4 veering W occ 5 later in the day. The tides were light neaps so we were confident that even if it blew harder the sea would not get uncomfortably rough. The alternative of waiting in Cherbourg for the following day looked less promising. A variable F2, which in my experience means no wind at all worth trying to sail in. So decision made, our return channel crossing would be today.
Our passage began with a trip to the fuel berth, which was occupied but had room for a little one at the back. We squeezed in. There was a big German yacht in the middle of the pontoon and another English guy rafted onto his outside. The guy outside was currently filling up. He finished and a french attendant, cigarette clasped in lips, dragged the dripping fuel line back over the German yacht. Clearly the German had arrived early, laid down his towel and left for the showers as there was no one on board, so the hose was passed to us. We dragged it to full stretch but it would not quite reach, I tugged and heaved but Mr nozzle remained 30cm from Mrs filler pipe. We re jigged our lines and improved things, but not by enough. The pipe was still too short. At the opposite end of the pontoon a French fisherman had just arrived, who despite the heat already building so early in the day, was resplendent in a rubbery ensemble of yellow bib and brace with black wellies and finished with a smoldering Gaulois at his lips. He was becoming clearly frustrated at our antics and was animating this to his friend the fuel attendant, the exhaled puffs of smoke rising between them looking like two tribes of Native Americans communicating. I wasn’t prepared to give up my hose however and with further adjusting of our mooring lines which left our bow anchor chipping the gelcoat off the German yachts stern, I finally managed to successfully reach the filler hole.

Anne on the Helm Leaving Cherbourg harbour

That time consuming taskette completed we bobbled off toward the harbour entrance and motored into a flat calm. The rising column of steam from the stern warning me of a water intake blockage only moments before the piercing electronic screech of the engine overheat alarm confirmed my fears. This particular problem occurs so regularly aboard my boat that I have installed quick releasing hose clips on the offending sea cock, so screwdriver in hand I dived under the aftercabins capacious bunk and pulled the foot of weed which had been drawn up into the kingston cock when the engine had been idling off the fuel pontoon which was covered, just below the waters surface, with an exciting botanical mix of marine vegetation.
We had to slow down slightly to allow the engine to recover, but apart from the frustration and another twenty minutes of time, it was only a minor inconvenience.
Once out in the channel, about an hour later than scheduled, the light Southerly wind that was forecast could be seen clearly as it dispersed the cloud of smoke from a huge cliff top fire which was engulfing the countryside to the East of Cherbourg.
However that wind was high up out of our reach, down on the water the story was completely different, we had 15 to 20 knots from the North East.
There was no point arguing with nature no matter how bizarre it appeared, so we hoisted the main, sheeted in and motor sailed into a rapidly building head sea.
Our first ship of the day was spotted on the radar at about the same time as we saw it. It was about 8 miles away and it was moving fast.

Ever Racer at 24.4 knots

The 300 Metre long container ship 'Ever Racer' was indeed racing along. According to the AIS data it was heading straight for us at a frighteningly fast 24.4 Knots. We altered course by 90 degrees and watched the monster pass ahead of us from a safe distance. More time passed as did more ships, the swell was rising, and the consistent Northerly wind was steadily raising a finger to the forecast as we continued to motor sail into the shipping lanes.
I went down to look at the radar, there were a couple of targets right out on the edge of the scale just under 16 miles off to the west. I went back on deck and scanned the horizon, nothing.
A few minutes later the first dark shape was visible and then quite quickly there were three. I watched for a few minutes more and then nipped down below to check on the radar. It was like the scene in Aliens where the radar shows the arrival of the monsters...
On the screen there was a widely spread group of 8 little sperms all swimming towards the egg, only Enigma was the egg. Outside on the ocean the little sperms were a large cluster of deep sea ships all trying to overtake each other to get a good position for the single file required through the Dover strait. A bit like an eight lane dual carriageway going down to one lane, and everybody determined not to get stuck behind the bloke with the Caravan. Within minutes we were altering course like a slug crossing a six lane motorway. There were ships of all shapes and sizes traveling at all speeds as well, for a few nerve racking moments our eyes were glued on the bows of a supertanker that was heading straight for us. The radar said it should go behind us, and I made the course as near to a right angle to him as I could get to be sure, and then slowly but surely we drew ahead, into the path of another ship. This time he was a little smaller and a little slower, so without too much fuss we turned and headed straight for him and nipped around his stern. The captain appeared at the bridge wing and we exchanged waves.
By this time the tide had turned to run Eastwards and although the engine was still running we had hoisted the jib to join the main and despite dodging the shipping traffic we had been banging along for about an hour at about 6.5 knots with a decent 17 knots of breeze close hauled and hopeful of the perfect sailing breeze to take us home to England. We were a little surprised therefore when we suddenly did a spectacular all standing gybe, as the mainsail whipped around the othe side of the boat and threw Enigma over on the opposite tack. We rounded up so fast the autopilot gave up and started beeping like a whining child that didn’t want to play anymore. With no one steering the sails took over, the boat rolled over on her beam ends and we were hurled around the cockpit as all hell broke loose and Enigma started heading back for France.
Never in my sailing career have I ever experienced such a violent and dramatic wind shift. The wind had veered from the North East at 16 knots to Due south at 16 knots and we were left trying to work out what the hell had gone wrong.
After things had settled down a bit and it looked as if the forecast wind was definitely here to stay we worked out what had happened. The Northerly wind was a sea breeze caused by the rising hot air on the French mainland being replaced by the cooler air sitting above the surface of the sea. The North Easterly had done well to last this far out to sea and had clearly been pushing his luck enough to upset the prevailing Southerly, who had finally decided enough was enough and had whipped the last eddies into a swirling frenzy before taking over in the proper prevailing direction. His work now done he relaxed and began to die away to a roasting hot calm. On the surface of the sea however we were all over the place picking our way through what was left after the fight. The rhythm of the waves was suddenly broken by the new wind direction and our sails were left slatting with the uncomfortable roll of the sea. To get ourselves back in control we dropped the sails in a bit of a rush, and started off again just on the engine.
Once we got our breath back after all the excitement, and although we were thankfull this incident had not happened earlier when we had been weaving our way through the shipping, we were feeling a little cheated out of our decent bit of wind, and the confused and rolling swell was not helping to make us any happier as 'Harry the Ghost', our hard working autopilot, was complaining bitterly about the swell and snaking around the ocean like a lost tourist in an airport arrivals hall.
It was as if our complaints of tedium on the journey out had been heard by Neptune and he had decide to remind us just how twisted nature can be, as no sooner had we got control of the situation when we were sent a plague of pestilence for our sins in the form of hundreds of tiny orange flies that appeared out of nowhere, speckling the sails, deck, and crew with there rust coloured bodies. Where they came from was a mystery, we were thirty miles from land and up until ten minutes ago the wind had been blowing hard in the opposite direction. The darned things were everywhere, landing on our sun cream covered limbs and faces. Covered in helpless insects, crawling around in the goo, I felt like a giant piece of flypaper as the dead and dying bodies of my victims clung to my skin and in my hair. It was truly horrid. Just as this particular low point was reached the engine alarm exploded into life for the second time that day with its ear shattering beep and I suddenly feared the impellor had failed. Thankfully the overheat was only caused by my eagerness to regain control of my vessel, and in so doing had inadvertently wound up the engine to over 3000 revs, which in the summer months my little Yanmar objects to, so thankfully this time the alarm stopped without the intervention of a screwdriver and we were on our way again, but not before I had stripped the bed down again and left a trail of bloody smears from crushed insects on the underside of the mattress.
To top off this catalogue of horrors, after all the palaver, we were about a mile further west than we should have been, and had to make a course alteration which would cost us more time.
The next hour was spent wallowing in an annoyingly lumpy swell that was remaining after the wind shift. We rolled and lolled around with no sails to steady us. The autopilot struggled to cope with the lurching waves and our snaking wake and the desperate whine of the autopilot motor made us give 'Harry the Ghost' an off watch, and we steered manually.
All was uncomfortable but safe for a while, and then the engine died.
The first time it happened it lost revs for a second, coughed politely and then as I looked at Anne to check she hadn’t adjusted the throttle, we were back up to full speed again. A few moments later and things were far more serious.
The engine decelerated, hovered at half revs and then stalled.
We were engineless and windless in the middle of the busiest shipping lane in the world, and we were still 8 hours away from safety..
It was not turning out to be a good day.
The engine started in neutral and after revving a dense cloud of acrid smoke out the exhaust, the thing appeared under control. Back in gear it was a different story, every few minutes the boats heartbeat would falter and the engine revs would die away, we would put the engine out of gear, rev the engine until its note steadied and then put it back in gear. Creeping along in this nerve racking fashion was not doing much for our mood. What if it failed altogether? How would we get home? If we had no engine and no wind how would we avoid the ships, we were so far out I was not even sure our radio signal would manage to alert the coastguard. There was nothing to be said, no plans to be discussed. We both knew the dangers and it was not worth upsetting each other by spelling it out. We both fell silent as we just got on with the job of getting our little boat home.
The next three hours were not pleasant ones. My heart was in my mouth the whole time, and just when the engine appeared to have recovered for a while it would falter and die again.
The problem was the fuel. Either the French fuel added that morning had water or something else indigestible by diesel engines as part of its make up or, in my opinion less likely, there was water or filth already in the tank which had been stirred up by the motion of the ocean. I knew the engine fuel filters were in prime condition, and anyway a properly blocked filter would mean that we would only get the engine to run in tick over and would not have recovered so easily. I also religiously add a diesel additive to the tank when filling up that claims to 'eliminate diesel bug, reduce knocking, clean injectors and stop the build up of sludge' And I know it works because since I started using the stuff three years ago, whenever the fuel filters are replaced at engine service time, instead of the filth blackened tube that I was used to extracting, the outgoing filters are often as clean as the ones that replace them. I had also decided it must be the French fuel so I could blame someone other than myself.
Our misery dragged on through the hot afternoon and we clawed our way along until around 17:00 before the first zephyrs of the Westerly that had been forecast arrived, and before long we had the sails up and were broad reaching happily along, the engine still grumbling down below, but its protesting coughs and splutters went largely ignored as the sails swept us home. We were still well out of the sight of land and had been for over eight hours, but the chances of an early call of 'land ahoy' from the crows nest was becoming unlikely as the horizon was drawing closer toward us in the restricted visibility of a heat haze. We kept one eye on the radar and spotted a target early. Another huge container vessel thundering along from the west. It was one of the Happag Lloyd Express class making over 20 knots in our general direction, but this time we couldn’t see it because of the fog.
Our AIS radar is a fantastic piece of kit and as an early warning system I could not have asked for more, but with the speed at which this vessel was approaching, by the time I could zoom the resolution in to be able to calculate if it would hit us, it would be too late for us to get out of its way, we scanned the western haze, our eyes on stalks and our hearts in our mouths. It appeared through the fog at about 4 miles or 6 minutes away, but we still couldnt quite tell whether it was going to pass in front, behind or straight on top.
We continued to stare.
With about three minutes to go I span the boat around and headed back to France, and the container ship went behind us. We would probably have missed it if we had stood on, but we would certainly have been able to read the time on the helsmans watch.
Just as we thought things on this trip would start to improve quite soon the radio alarm started to ring. It was Solent coastguard with a 'securite' call regarding a strong wind warning about to be broadcast on channel 67.
We switched to 67 and waited...
In true coastguard style nothing happened. About a minute later nothing was continuing to happen and whatever message of doom was about to be broadcast, the coastguard was in no hurry to ease the suspense.
"Securite securite securite. All ships this is Solent Coastguard"
and then the nothing they were becoming so good at continued for another minute.
Since we had had no good news at all so far this trip I was expecting to be told there was an isolated hurricane 20 miles south of the Isle of Wight and that if anyone was in that area they should contact Solent coastguard with a final message that could be passed on to the next of kin, so I was frustrated at being made to wait for the inevitable portent of impending doom.
I was just about to grab the mike and holler "tell my mum and dad I love them and tell my best mate he could have my CD collection" when the coastguard finally decided to break the tension and finally broadcast his message.
There had been some isolated easterly squalls off Newhaven which had been reported to reach over 40 knots. Disappointingly we were miles away so it looked as if George Clooney would have to act out the part of another poor sod caught in that particular isolated Hurricane.
Our relief at the news was short lived as it was mere moments before the piercing alarm sounded once again.
This time it was Portland Coastguard's turn to bring tales of woe. They issued an urgent met office warning for the area Lyme Regis to Selsey Bill and up to 12 miles offshore, consisting of thundery showers and variable and unpredictable wind of up to F6 or F7.
"Ah hah! some breeze" I cheered "we'll have some of that"
and although we were still 20 miles offshore hopefully the wind would still be blowing when we arrived. I just prayed it would not be right on our nose. The wind picked up right enough, it was no where near a force 6, but we were soon lolloping along perfectly, the engine dying and coughing and its protestations being ignored as the wind blew us onward, close reaching with jib and main out full all the way back to the safe and familiar waters of the Solent.