La Hirondelle 7

 

A diminutive gull swoops between the moored fishing boats. Its outsized cries echoing from the rough stone walls of the quayside.

The only sound to break the silence, of this Normandy fishing port, out of season. As a newly arrived trawler, nets drying in the last of the evening sunshine, loads its catch into a waiting truck.

Stargazer sailed, from Le Havre's modernist hive of activity, at first light. Skeins of mizzle veiling the point. Borne upon a passage making breeze, from the west.

The attitudes, of the bows of the merchantmen, at anchor in the roads, awaiting their appointments with the dockside cranes, testify that the east going tide is in mid flow.

Stargazer has wind and tide against her, for now. Diving deep into the Baie de la Seine, where the least current flows, on the starboard tack. Taking first one reef, and then two, as the wind builds from sixteen to twenty two knots.

We tack onto port, off Ouistreham. Shaking a reef out, in nineteen knots apparent. Preferring to stay slightly over powered, in order to point three or four degrees higher. Shaving valuable sea miles off today's journey into the eye of the wind. Stargazer's ground track describes an arc, from due north to north west. As the tide changes in our favour.

Stargazer stands out into the Channel. Where the tide runs hardest. Before tacking back onto starboard. The second reef in, once more. 

Spray flies, through the afternoon. On port tack once more. Single reefed. Candy floss clouds, on the horizon, hinting at land ahead.

By sixteen hundred hours, the tide is on the turn. Stargazer on starboard tack. Arcing south west, to her intended landfall, under full sail. The breeze easing and veering. Enabling us to set a direct course. After a day of oblique zig zags.

The formless hint of land metamorphoses into firm textures and shapes. The grey silhouette, of the distinctive dome topped Vauban tower, our landmark these past several miles, gains colour.

Until the brickwork, of the blanked out gun embrasures, of Napoleon's fortifications, the lichen on the roofs of the terraced cottages, become clear. As Stargazer beats up the channel. Under main only, whilst I rig lines and fenders.

In readiness for Stargazer's arrival, in the rural Normandy fishing port of St Vaast-la-Hougue.