Cruising with Pimpernel
Published 09:46 on 2 Aug 2023
Most "sailing away from the Club" news is about strenuous and adrenaline-packed dinghy racing, so I thought we needed an item about the more relaxed art of leisurely cruising.
Leaving the Club to retain the Folly trophy without us this year the crew of Pimpernel (average age over 80, but who's counting..) set off for Brittany at the beginning of July. The first day, into the wind down to the Western Solent, pushing tide after Cowes and dodging racing fleets, turned out to be one of the hardest of the trip. Crossing the Channel the following day was a breeze (albeit a stiff breeze) in comparison. Nothing got in our way and ten hours after leaving Hurst at 5 am we were anchored in the Rade in Cherbourg, having sailed most of the way. The Channel tides (not always obeying exactly the rules laid down for them in the Tidal Atlas) gave us an extra knot or two over the ground all day.
On July 7 after overnighting on the waiting pontoon in St Helier we sailed past St Malo, beautiful in the late afternoon sunshine and locked through the impressive Rance tidal barrier (the oldest and second biggest tidal power station in the world). A restful few days in the beautiful Rance river followed.
Pimpernel draws 1.5m. The skipper took due note of the pilot book's advice that boats drawing more than 1.3 couldn't get up to Dinan in the non-tidal canal pound above the Chatelier Lock. But having navigated this waterway back in the day when the only guidance was from transits (fading white blob on tree trunk in line with wonky withy) he took us up to Dinan with aplomb rather than a plumbline, and with only 0.1m under the keel at times. The channel is now generously buoyed and the crew, spared from having to transit-spot, served coffee and cake. We do a lot of that on Pimpernel.
At Dinan, having tied up on Friday on one of a slew of empty finger pontoons we were initially told we couldn't possibly stay as the spaces were all reserved for the world-famous water-jousting festival at the weekend. But after a bit of a conversation the harbour master told us that as we spoke such very excellent French he would make a special exception, just for us, keep it to yourselves, don't tell the others, they'll all want one.
Dinan is a lovely old town. Up a very steep hill from the port but the free bus service made light, if rattly on the pavé, work of it. The water jousting turned out to be low-key fun in that inimitable French way. Small but enthusiastic groups of cheering locals from surrounding villages, crews in fancy dress, beers all round on the quayside at 9 am and endless over-excited shouting from an "animateur" with a dodgy PA system. Bouts of martial Breton pipe and drums music, interspersed with Europop, stiffened the sinews of the jousters. Some of whom fell in the canal and were rescued by a RIB manned by two old men without buoyancy aids. RYA examiners avert your gaze
Several of the surrounding berths were empty all weekend and still empty when we left.. the crewing jumping up to lighten the boat in the shallow patches down to the Chatelier lock.
Forecast heavy winds complicated our return journey. Pimpernel's crew doesn't do Force 7 and we make strenuous efforts to avoid Force 6. We had to scrap the plan to overnight in Chausey and head for Jersey instead. I dare say Jersey is a pleasant enough island but St Helier itself has little to commend it even when it doesn't rain most of the day. We ran out of enthusiasm for a possible bus trip round the island, trekked a good mile to the showers, drank some excellent red wine and had a siesta instead. After a second night in St Helier we grabbed a break in the wind to get up to Carteret which is a delightful and quite classy French resort not a bad place to spend time hiding from the weather. The first of our four nights there was busy and noisy with crews of the "Ports de la Manche" race overnighting before their next leg to St Helier. Once they'd set off on the early tide next morning, all was peaceful, with plenty of restaurants to choose from for a gourmet lunch by the sea.
On 14 July we took a remarkably cheap bus trip to Valognes where almost everything was shut (we'd kind of overlooked the fact that it was Bastille Day.) though we enjoyed the Cathedral, an impressive combination of the old and the new much having been destroyed by Allied bombing in 1944. The organist was practising his voluntaries, which added to the atmosphere as did the lingering smell of incense.
The evening fireworks lived up to the expectations of a crew who had all spent several previous Bastille Days in French ports.
A hard but quick sail (well, it was quick till the tide turned as expected once we were past Cap de la Hague) saw us back into the Petite Rade in Cherbourg, a perfect jumping off point for the Channel crossing with no sleepy fumbling with warps and fenders.
The channel crossing was fine, with good SW/W breeze and the swell from the previous windy days dying down. Back in Blighty we celebrated the end of our cruise with a splendid dinner and a bottle (but not the last bottleyou never know) of wine on a buoy in Mengham Rithe before pottering up to Emsworth Yacht Harbour with the flood tide on July 18.
Naturally there were some onboard nautical snags and seacockups to deal with during the trip. All were successfully surmounted, we didn't sink, and what goes on tour stays on tour.
Pam Wilkinson
