Struggling towards Ushant

Between the fog and the darkness I saw very few of the ships shown on the AIS. After Orcades disappeared ahead I only saw one other yacht. Solo Sailor Urro was less than a mile away, but I never even caught a glimpse of her. When it got light and the fog lifted slightly I did see a couple of cargo boats, but they were all well clear of our course. They gave me some idea of the visibility too; I could see for less than 2 miles.

Julian came up to take the watch again at 08:00, and made porridge, which was very welcome, then I headed down for an hour’s sleep before getting up for the day.

As we motor sailed through the morning the fog got thicker again and we were very glad of George on the helm. After Julian’s heroic cooking efforts of last night we decided to be simpler for lunch. Pot noodles have their place in boat cuisine!

By the time we had finished lunch we were less than 10 miles from Ushant, but could see nothing of it . The fog had closed in again, and even Worm’s stern was shrouded in white.

Then things began to go wrong.

The engine stopped. Since we now had a flat calm and were clear of the shipping lanes we had time to work out what had happened. First check, diesel. Both fuel tanks were half full, and the valves were open, so it was not as simple a problem as last time. Out came Nigel Calder’s book on diesel engines, and his diagnostics told us we might have an air bubble in the fuel lines. It took us an hour to bleed the fuel lines since we had never done it before, but once we had the engine started. Hurrah!

Unfortunately while we were just sitting there, on an apparently flat sea, the new tiller pilot fitting Julian had made broke, so George was now out of action. And we would be hand steering the rest of the way in thick fog. (Julian has lost count of the number of times he has fixed that. We need to do something more permanent.)

Once we were under way I went below to log the incident, and saw steam coming out of the engine compartment. The exhaust pipe had come off the anti-syphon box, giving the engine a hot shower. So the engine had to go off again while Julian did up the hose clips to re-fix it. I had lifted the cockpit sole to give him more light, and when the engine went back on I could see the stern gland nut rattling on the drive shaft. 

This is actually our current biggest long-term problem. There is a bit missing and we can't get it fixed without the prop-shaft coming out. We should have had it done in the winter (it's been wrong for ages) and forgot. It is the source of most of the water coming in to the hull now.

So I got down inside and tightened it as much as I could and that took more time.

Another hour had passed while we fixed these problems, and Ushant got no closer. In fact it got further away, as a tidal stream began to push us back north at 2 knots, then 3, then 4. Even with the engine back on we were barely station keeping, creeping forward at under 1 knot and having to be very careful where we aimed. A compass heading of 210° kept us going in the right direction. Any deviation from that had us going backwards, or pointing at the dangerous rocks of the invisible Ushant coast line rather than the west end of the Island where we needed to be.

Despite having only 5 miles to go on our chart plotter track it took another four hours before we got to the moorings at the  head of Lampaul Bay. 

The flat calm ended and a west-south-westerly wind came in which helped us, but best course to windward took us too far south, so I had to keep luffing the main to keep us on course. (We tried tacking, but that just took Robinetta backwards with the tide). Sailing as well as possible with the engine on saw us doing first 1, then 1½ knots in the right direction. Then the speed began to go up as the tide lost its grip.

As the speed rose so did the sea state. Ushant finally appeared through the fog when we were about 2 miles off and we had a nice motor sail for about 15 minutes, swooping iup and down the waves making 4 knots. Then we were doing 5 and I turned the engine off. The speed dropped back to 3 knots but the waves seemed to be getting bigger.

Julian and I just wanted to be in harbour by this point, so we put the engine back on and as our speed increased to 6 knots the wave crests shortened and developed triangular points. The tide that had been fighting us was now helping us recover the ground, but the wind had come in from the opposite direction and now we had wind over tide.

These rapidly became some of the worst overfalls we've been out in and we had some pretty bad ones off the Isle of Man and off Holyhead. There is absolutely nothing on the chart to indicate that they might be there.

We had been surprised by only seeing a few sea birds on our trip so far, and suddenly we knew why. They were all here, flocking to catch the fish that must have been taken there by the tide. I had no time to watch them though, as helming took all my concentration. I could not spare any attention to look at Worm being towed along behind. Julian did, looked worried, and let out some more of the tow rope.

Robinetta excelled herself. We got one big lump of sea swirling into the cockpit, and a couple of splashes over the side, but she rode out the rough sea perfectly.  At six knots we were no longer crawling towards harbour; it felt as though we were racing as we we passed the Phare de Nividic’s strange pylons, then the lighthouse itself and it was time to turn Robinetta’s stern on to the waves. The rollers were still obvious, but the triangular points were 10 cm rather than 100cm , so the waves were less chaotic in the mouth of the bay, making the turn was less traumatic than I feared. We centred the main sail as we turned, so avoided a potential gybe, then surfed into Lampaul Bay on staysail, jib, and engine.

By the time we reached the head of the bay the swell felt very gentle. There were 8 yachts already there, but there were plenty of vacant mooring buoys. We picked one up as close to the harbour as possible to shorten our row ashore, and turned the engine off at 20:30 BST, totally exhausted.

We had made it to France.