Last year we made our way down the coast into Devon, but with a little more experience under our belt and a sort of settling around the pandemic, we started to think about plans for 2022. Initially, we had planned to sail to France, spend a couple of days and then make our way to Alderney and possibly another Channel Island, but the more planning I did, the more I thought about visiting the rest of the Channel Islands. We are big fans of Studland Bay so our plan was to take a day and get from the Hamble to Studland and then the next day, sail from Studland to Alderney. 

We arrived at the boat for our two-week holiday and before we could do anything, we needed to repair the anchor light that failed at Easter. Having never climbed the mast before, we watched several videos and tested our newly purchased Bosuns chair. Our plan was to use the main halyard as we needed to reach the top of the mast and use the genoa halyard as a backup. We started to take the sail down and as we did, the furler got stuck and we spent the next hour wrestling with the sail to unjam it. Looking back we let the tension off that a little too much before we started to unfurl the sail. Add to the list of jobs!

Both Chris and I had a go at climbing the mast, Chris checked the lower shrouds and replaced the steaming light with a new cool white LED bulb and then a boat neighbour came over to give us a hand and before I knew it I was at the top of the mast. Utmost respect for anyone who does this on a regular basis or has done this at sea, I was holding on at the top like my life depended on it. We changed the anchor light for another cool white LED and the Tricolour for a warm white LED. You need warm white for this as the colours can change with a cool light behind them. The bulbs were changed in a couple of minutes and I was back on the deck…. Phew. We also replaced the lower navigation bulbs and found the bow light had been mounted upside down and the cover was just hanging on. Now the right way round, the cover clicked into place and was secure.

Now the furler, we have a Selden mast and furler. It’s always been a little stiff to operate and now we know why… it needed grease. For both the top and bottom, you simply force the stuff into the race and operate it a couple of times to move it around. It’s really simple and something we will now keep on top of. We used the blue Selden grease and what we managed to clean out was extremely sticky and black. These jobs took us a day to complete in the end.

Right – Back on track. Water topped up, provisions on board, and we leave tomorrow (Monday).

Monday’s forecast was for increasing winds, our original plan was to be in Studland Sunday night, check to see if the forecast was right for Monday and either set off or wait it out. Now we were heading out and it was very rough in the Solent. We sailed and motored down towards the Needles, we made it as far as Newtown Creek, we were wet and a little fed up so we stopped on a mooring to see what the afternoon would bring. It did start to calm after a couple of fronts moved through but by this time, everyone was getting comfy and not all that eager to get back out. We stayed the night. 

The next day was completely different, with not a lot of wind and sunshine. We got ourselves up, and took the tide all the way past Hurst castle and through the north channel over towards Studland. After an uneventful sail in good conditions, we arrived at Studland Bay. We normally anchor here but one of the eco moorings was free so we picked that up. In doing so, we lost one of our boat hooks – It’s so difficult to get a line through a hoop mooring from the bow of our boat. I’m thinking about getting one of those mooring hooks that threads the line for you, are they any good?? Now firmly attached, we went ashore for ice cream and a beer in the pub.

Tuesday was an early start but everyone was really excited about this. Conditions were good, bright clear morning with a forecast easterly at about 12kn. Our boat will sail in this, especially with it being on the beam, it also means that it’s going to be calm which also helps. We motored out past Swanage and Durlston head and then got the sails out. The wind was about 8-10kn a this point but it was starting to build. We set our course for Alderney and let the tide do its thing.

Sailing with the tide can be helpful or it can be a pain. For most of our sailing, it’s with or against us but on this occasion, it’s pushing us left and right as it makes its way up and down the channel. The tip in the pilotage guide is to let it do this, let it take you 6 hours one way and 6 hours the other as the planned crossing time for this journey is around 12 hours. The thing to consider is it’s never exactly 12 hours, you could cross sooner, plus the tide will change depending on how far away from the land you are. The morning tide was going east, so that meant we would end up more towards the French coast and then as we got closer to Alderney we could adjust course and hopefully, the tide would push us towards it, especially as we got close to the race. Around mid-day, we were approximately 5 miles off the GPS track, the wind hadn’t been exactly as forecast and was more SW or even SSW at times. This meant that the 5 miles gained by the tide would have to do unless we wanted to tack and sail away from Alderney adding more time to our journey. We did a little course correction in the shipping lanes as these guys were like freight trains and the wind seemed to take 5 minutes as we were crossing.

We sailed on, keeping an eye on that track as it slowly counted that cross-track error down to .5nm… have we calculated correctly or will we overshoot…