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Reunited, Stargazer and the Atlantic swell, romp together. Like over joyed puppies. Delighting in each other's company. Off the leash.
Leaping high. Plunging low. Riding each roaring salt spangled wave. Sporting in the breeze.
Shortly after sunrise, crews bound south ready their craft, in the silence of St Peter Port outer harbour. Assembling on the pontoons in small knots (far right). The inner cill (mid picture) still many hours from covering.
Stargazer sails with the fishing fleet. Slipping past St Martin's point. The tide away, beneath her.
I make sense of the new day, with a warming pot of coffee, as the sun climbs higher. Twelve knots of breeze on the starboard quarter.
The sparsely peopled, high cliffs of the southern coast of Guernsey (which has no harbours, but a variety of secluded anchorages, tenable in lighter northerly weather) slide astern.
The breeze clears, to a full eighteen to twenty four knots. Stargazer swoops and soars over the swell. Under full sail. Rig humming. Sails bellied taut. The joyous roar of wind and sea fills the air.
Through the day thoughts swirl pleasurably. Memories of a Cornish beach holiday. Dad and sister Ali, aboard Mrs Tiggy (our Mirror Dinghy), me aboard my Laser. Skimming through, under and over the estuary chop. One breezy spray filled day, many summers ago.
By evening, Stargazer has scented the west going tide, off Brehat. Slicing past, to seaward of, Les Sept Iles. Furling the jib, for an hour, to allow us to bear off onto a dead run.
The better for Stargazer to squeeze between Les Sept Iles and Les Triagoz reefs. On the rhumb line.
Destination: the Breton crags and castles of the Baie de Morlaix. The rugged Atlantic France, which we love!
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