By the Light of the Silvery Moon

 

 

At sunset Stargazer is twenty nautical miles west north west of Le Havre . Heading north east, to catch a fair tide up Channel.

An hour or so earlier, we had crossed tracks with a French boat which left St Vaast, at midday, with Stargazer. Both of us hoisted our downwind sails, as soon as we cleared the harbour mole. They have run dead downwind under spinnaker, on the rhumb line from St Vaast to Le Havre.

Stargazer set her asymetric and sailed south east, towards Ouistreham, before gybing back north - to give ourselves a better wind angle for our sail, and to catch less adverse tide. When we cross tracks, after eight hours' sailing, we are still neck and neck.

We wave as we pass. The French boat carrying on into Le Havre, Stargazer eager to make the most of her six hours of eastbound tide. The barometric breeze reasserts itself, as the sun's heat diminishes. The wind freshens and comes round a point or two. I drop the asymetric and Stargazer reaches out into the English Channel under white sails.

Where Stargazer alights will depend on our progress overnight. Daylight fades to twilight. The sea glints with refracted reds and golds, like beaten copper. A fixed red light appears on the horizon. I recheck the almanac, I had not expected to see one . Mars climbs higher, turns a less fiery red, in a clear night sky. The familiar constellations, bright and white, appear to hang at mast-scraping height. Beyond them an infinity of galaxies mesmerise. The moon peeps above the horizon two hours later. A deep orange satsuma segment of a waning moon. As it rises fully, it assumes its customary smoked silver visage . Lighting our way along the coast.

Wind and tide carry us up to Pointe Fagnet, before the current weakens . I pick out the denser black of the tall cliff from the shadowy sea and sky surrounding it . Search out the lights marking the pier heads of Fecamp. Line Stargazer up on a point between the two occulting beacons . Green to starboard . White (unusually) to port.

I look down at the chart plotter. We are in a safe position, about half a mile off, but aiming for the shingle beach. The tide has turned and is setting hard, west, across the narrow entrance. We bear right off, onto a dead run, to offset the tide. As we close in, on the two moles, what my eyes see and what the plotter predicts reconcile more closely with each course correction. Soon the glint of reflected light on wet stonework confirms the position of the welcoming stone walls.

Stargazer slips into a berth (top right) on a quiet, out of season, visitors' pontoon. Inshore of the renovated cod fishing goelette, which I photographed on our visit in July. It is zero five hundred. I weigh up whether to eat an early breakfast, or to grab a couple of hours in my bunk, before dawn . I drift off, whilst deciding, into a sleep filled with swirling images of shimmering stars and moonlit seas.