Harbour Master Sailing Challenge 2019 to 2023 (Ireland being written up)

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First Channel Crossing

15 April 2023. Your first channel crossing….

…is a big milestone for an amateur skipper and I am pleased to say it went very smoothly. The weather plays a big part but so too does the strength of the tide. With a light northerly wind our colourful cruising chute was the perfect sail to use.

When working out what course to steer, it is (in hindsight) remarkably simple. The crossing takes roughly 12 hours and the tide pushes you West for six hours and then East for six hours. So, if you add up the net distance you get pushed both ways – it comes to very little – in our case about two degrees off to the east.

Thank you to James and Dominic for crewing for me.

 

After drawing a line from Portland to the east end of Alderney – a course of about 167′, we simply steered 169′ nearly all the way and as photo 3 shows our course was as predicted – a perfect C. This is often referred to as an S shaped course – I am not sure why!

Alderney came into view about half way across the channel, and although we were pointing well west of the island, the east going tide gently corrected our actual position and it was only for the last few miles we had to “steer by hand” to make it into the harbour entrance

The channel is VERY busy with shipping. For a 20 mile stretch ships are “channelled” into two “one way” traffic zones to prevent them meeting head on.

Any boat crossing these channels has to do it at exactly 90′ to minimise the time crossing.

As it happened we only had to change course a couple of times to keep clear.

We were travelling at about 5 knots (nautical miles per hour) whereas the ships travel at about 17 knots ….and don’t have any brakes!

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