En France 92

The mutiny comes without warning. Perhaps they always do? At daybreak Stargazer is fifteen miles off Dieppe. Making for the Channel shipping lanes.

She had left harbour in the dark. Dodging the inshore stragglers and circling trawlers. Their deck lights ablaze. Making navigation lights difficult to discern, by eye. Relying instead on AIS, to guage their direction of travel.

Stargazer has picked up the south westerly, passage making, wind. She rides it into the dawn. Broad reaching in sixteen to eighteen knots, under the lee of the French shore. A precautionary reef in the main. For I expect the breeze to build, as we clear the land.

She lopes easily over a long swell. Herald of another big blow, forecast to come in overnight.

Surfs across the ever shifting slopes of steel blue sea. A foaming bow wave streams aft.

We are making between seven and eight knots, nine on the surfs. Stargazer's speed reducing the, now, over twenty knots of true wind, to fourteen apparent. 

Beachy Head is a smudge on the horizon, by midday. The breeze up to twenty five knots with seas building. It is all too much, for our taciturn tiller-pilot. The silent stoic, on deck in all weathers, always steering a steady course, mutinies. Not to be recalled to duty, by any means which I have to hand. With the skipper now required at the helm, full time.

Rain squalls race through, as Stargazer romps across seas which are now rearing high. Stacking up as the bottom rises toward the Royal Sovereign shoals. Making a consistent eight knots. Helm light, as she begins to plane. Ordinarily I would have the second reef in by now. But cannot leave the tiller, to haul it down. Stargazer hums and resonates as she rockets, airborne, toward the striped safe-water mark, off Sovereign harbour.

 

En France 91

 

A pharaonic trumpeting, of air-horns, announces that the fishing fleet is putting to sea.

One by one, the colourful cavalcade break away, from the raft beside the quay.

Tender farewells are said to families. Ribald insults are exchanged between crews.

Before the roar of engines, and cacophony of sirens, drowns out all possibility of speech. And the boats race for the harbour entrance.

A low sun casts an eerie glow, along the shingle shore.

The sea is calm, off the Dieppe breakwater today. With fifteen to eighteen knots, of south westerly breeze, forecast for the morning. A fair wind, on which to cross the Channel.

Sailors think similarly, when faced with a forecast.  The Rival 36 Arkaway also plans to cross tomorrow. Heading home to Suffolk, after a summer in Spain. Nursing a cracked rudder, following an altercation with a pod of 'interactive' Orca, off A Coruna. A companion for Stargazer's passage up Channel.

En France 90

The big yellow Transmanche ferries bring with them full facilities to stamp passports. Enabling Stargazer to formally leave Schengen, after her five month sojourn.

Indeed that was Stargazer's prime motivation for sailing to Dieppe. 

I had forgotten the charm of this seafaring town.

The storm, of the past thirty-six hours, has blown through. Leaving a stunned silence. The breeze uncertain which way to turn. Light and fickle, for a day or two.

A chance for mother nature to redress the balance ; after a summer of sunshine and water shortages.

A day for chart work. Combining digital and analogue techniques, to calculate the tidal set, for Stargazer’s course across the Channel. Once the wind turns fair.

 

En France 89

 

Twenty thousand tonnes of steel rear and roll amid the surf.

Brutal seas batter the breakwater. Scaling its walls and clambering clear above it.

The outgoing Cote d'Alabatre delays her departure. Steaming slowly out, surrounded by streaming spume and spindrift. Her bow curtseys, as she meets the full force of the waves. Acknowledging their sovereign power.

They suck and seethe in the shingle. Rise high and roar, in unison with the gale. Salt spray fills the air. Wind and water, one.

In the harbour, the freedom loving crew, of Foule Sentimentale, prepares for a wild weekend sail. A Ukrainian flag flying from their backstay. In solidarity with that oppressed, but defiant, nation.

Deep reefed, with storm jib set, they plunge and leap. Facing forty knots of breeze.

White horses caper across tumbling liquid hillsides.

October has set out a stormy stall.

En France 88

 

The sun beams from a sky as blue as a duck's egg. Taking the chill edge off the light breeze, which wafts Stargazer's washing dry.

The pavement cafes are thronged, in the laconic way of their kind.

They line the quayside, beneath stately four storey facades.

Dieppe's harbour is in the bustling heart of town. To one side lie the pleasure craft.

To the other, the fishing fleet.

The crews under strict injunction, to be on their best behaviour.

Whilst the port pilots and the lifeboat moor at the head of the harbour. Ready for sea.

En France 87

 

An iridescent scimitar of shimmering light soars from the waves, to carve a circle of luminescent cyan, in the grey mantle of cloud. 

The sea boils, in a wind whipped confusion. Goaded by the two day gale.

In a day it will calm, for the breeze has eased to twenty five knots. But by tomorrow only light zephyrs will be left. Stargazer sails, from Fecamp, at first light.

Punching out over the swell, hard on the wind. Seeking flatter, deeper water by gaining a two mile offing.

Stargazer eases sheets, onto a fine reach. Feeling the eastbound tide start to make beneath her.

Skimming across the waves, light as a feather. Making eight knots over the ground.

To starboard, the shadow shrouded cliffs. Their sheer white faces streaked with ochre and brown. Topped with vivid green. A restless furrowed sea writhing at their feet.

The thunder, of wind and wave, combine into one full-throated roar. Stargazer flies, free as a bird.

The bright IPTS (International Port Traffic Signals) are visible two miles out, its lights set to green. I ease Stargazer onto a dead run, furling the jib, and make for them. Ferry gliding across the sweeping tide. Adjusting Stargazer's heading one mile off, when eyes and plotter confirm that the set, which I can see, (there are two) are at the breakwater root. Not at its tip. We drop the main in the calm of Dieppe's inner harbour.

Soizic (Freeborn in the Breton tongue), our friends from Brest and sundry ports between, has ridden out the last blow here. On passage home to Dunkerque. Welcoming Stargazer by taking our lines.

En France 86

 

"Who knows where the time goes?

Sad, deserted shore,

your fickle friends are leaving,

Ah, but then you know,

it's time for them to go. . . . .

So come the storms of winter,

and then the birds of spring again,

I have no fear of time."

(from 'Who Knows Where the Time Goes' by Sandy Denny, 1967)

The seas mound high, in Fecamp's entrance. Vaulting the close-set pier heads, in their eagerness to reach the shingle. Stargazer will not be leaving yet a while. The metronome, of wind and tide, must decide our timing. As they have done all summer.

Within the shelter of the harbour, we can only ponder our options, patiently. Stargazer must decide where to cross the Channel, to the English shore. That decision now bound up with the, post-Brexit, requirement to book out of France ; and the limited ports at which that is possible.