An Eventful Crossing

This week we crossed the English Channel from the Isle of Wight East Cowes and headed across to Cherbourg France. It's only a 75 mile jaunt and based on our traveling sped of five nautical miles an hour it should take us 15 hours but in reality, by the time you have stowed all shore lines and fenders and then hoisted the sails and done the reverse for docking/landing at the other end of the trip, it takes about 18-20 hours. Cruising is definitely something you need to do when you are NOT under any time constraints.

We had a boisterous crossing and compared to Ocean sailing you usually have more of a bumpy time of it crossing the channel. And I have to say it felt bitterly cold at times. Thankfully, below decks, we were able to run our diesel heating system which allowed us to nip below for a warm whilst keeping the watch (keeping a look out for other vessels), it was essential for one thin blooded female on board.

The following is an excerpt from our log of the trip cross channel.

Time	Event	Log	T	M	E	F%
1815	Slipped East Cowes Marina, bound Cherbourg France, Bob &Nicky on board	1349			on	100
2200	Sails hoisted, 2 reefs, engine off	1365	200		3.30	96.5
	20th April
0100	Engine on, sails lowered		200		on
0500	Alternator #2 shredded, probably due to misalignment. Much smoke. Engine off sails up, 2 reefs.		200		4.00	92.5
0800	Shake out reef, down to 1 reef	1412	200
1100	Sails down, engine on				on
1200	Berthed Chantereyne Marina, starboard side to.				1.0	91.5

At about 04:30 hours Robert was on deck manfully steering the yacht in the bitterly cold wind whilst I was snuggled down below in the bunk with a hottie bottie (hot water bottle) when I heard a weird noise, holy thawunk Batman what was that? If I remember correctly Robert leapt below deck started to open the engine room door and released a lot of smoke into the boat, he re-closed the door and raced back on deck to turn the engine off and he grabbed the fire extinguisher and re-opened the engine room door. Luckily the engine hadn't caught fire but there was something wrong. I had to climb on deck to keep a watch whilst Robert investigated.

Now the thing you have to remember is that we were motoring because there wasn't enough wind to sail and secondly we had already passed the mid-way point of the channel so we were back in the shipping lanes. And when I got on deck we were surrounded by ships and rather large ones at that. After checking over the engine Robert found the cause of our woes and it was this...

It's a metal whirly thing that sheared off the motor thingy attached to the engine.. lols.
It's something that sheared off one of the two alternators we have mounted on the engine. Now as you know if you've ever followed our blogs, we have work done to the boat and there always ends up being something not quite right about it. And this has just been added to the long, long list of those. In fact we've only had this second alternator fitted to the engine in the last month. And this was it's first proper outing.

Anyhoo, you can imagine the scene it was pitch black, no wind for sails and no engine, cast adrift in the shipping lanes of the English Channel in winter (well spring really, it just feels like winter). But fortunately it wasn't like that, once the smoke had cleared we still had an engine that was working and enough wind had set in for us to re-hoist the sails and head for Cherbourg. We ended up being thankful for the lead lined doors of the engine room and having an engine that still worked.

In fact we ended up having enough wind in Cherbourg to make berthing very tricky indeed but that's another story entirely.

Keep Well
Till next time x