Carteret now boasts a really excellent large marina with good bar/club and showers. The town itself is a perfect sleepy French holiday retreat with a couple of excellent 3 star hotels. We chose La Marine to celebrate my birthday on June 25th and were not disappointed by their 5 course menu and immaculate service. The forecast was for the wind to go due north and so with some reluctance we slipped out the day after our arrival, intending to take advantage of a day’s forecast westerly and head for Weymouth or Poole. For an hour we made very leisurely progress under genoa with a F2 from the South. Then the wind suddenly, veered and freshened and thick fog descended reducing visibility to less than 100m. Fortunately this is not a crowded stretch of water but I did not relish tackling the Traffic Separation Zone in thick fog so we decided to make for Alderney. With a bit of luck we would arrive off Braye at slack water or a bit after so entry even in fog would not be too much of a problem. We continued under sail making fog signals every couple of minutes and listening hard. I fired up the radar and its screen was reassuringly blank out to 4 miles. We made Braye with no problems and plotted a radar/GPS approach since visibility was still less than half a mile. Fog is always stressful and it was a pleasure to make fast to a welcoming visitor’s buoy in the lee of Braye’s massive Admiralty breakwater. By late afternoon the fog had lifted and we took the Mainbrace marine taxi ashore. The harbour was crowded with German, and Dutch boats as well as the usual large British contingent. Eating ashore that evening we met up with the crew of a Westerly Storm 33 who had left Carteret with us. They had headed for Dielette but despite GPS and soundings telling them they were within 200m of the entrance had been able to see absolutely nothing and had opted for the deeper clearer approach to Alderney.
Slept excellently with the secure feeling that comes from being on a well laid mooring. The morning dawned clear and sunny and there was much activity in the harbour as many boats prepared to leave. We dropped our mooring at 09.30 to catch the ‘Alderney eddy’ and maximum east going tide which would set us well towards the Needles. We were beam reaching at 6 knots or so with very few boats in sight although we did pass Ellen McArthurs’s ‘Kingfisher’ heading towards France. We wondered whether the intrepid Ellen was aboard – our heroine.
As afternoon drew on the wind freshened and by 18.00 was a steady 27/28 knots gusting to 30+. Seas were building in the long fetch down Channel from the Atlantic but we were well reefed down and comfortable. We turned east at the Needles fairway buoy and I was minded to choose the more tranquil north channel to approach the Solent. But despite strong wind over tide the overfalls appeared not too bad and quite limited in extent, so we headed straight up the needles channel on a run, rolling gunwhale to gunwhale under a sliver of sail. It was very lumpy but by 20.00 we had passed Hurst Narrows and settled down to a relaxing final leg home to Hythe where we arrived at midnight.
A perfect cruise in our backyard but with a host of wonderful memories, especially Chaussey and Plouer. Total distance travelled 377 NM.
