The Man in the Moon

 

 The image before me is straight out of an illustration for 'The Man in the Moon .' Venus (bottom right) dangles beneath the tip of a perfect lunar crescent. Bright white against the black of the night sky. To its left, the Beehive star cluster, sparkling like a scatter of diamonds, forms the third point of a glowing celestial triangle. 

( NB Alas, the Beehive cluster is not visible in my photograph. I had to wait until the predawn glow raised light levels, to capture a reasonably crisp image from Stargazer's moving deck - by which time the Beehive cluster was no longer visible. The timing also explains the blue, rather than black, tones of the sky)

Beyond the horizon the sun is stirring. Casting its glow. Extinguishing the myriad galaxies one by one, until only Venus and the long chinned Man in the Moon remain.

Finally they too are gone. A red eyed sun clambers blearily up into the morning sky, to begin the day.

Stargazer has been reaching, under cruising chute, on the night breeze. To our surprise and delight it was out of the south east, when we cleared the pier head at Dieppe, and stronger than forecast. There is a dawn lull, as the sun asserts its authority. Then the wind fills back in from the east. I harden in the sheets and Stargazer reaches up past Le Touquet. It is midday now and the sun is fiercely hot. The wind swings slightly to the north. Down comes the chute. We harden up onto a beat. Just laying our course, without the need to tack.. 

The tide turns as we approach Boulogne's harbour entrance. Stargazer claws her way in. We moor beneath the down town skyscrapers. Since we were here in July, the missing pontoons have been replaced. We are one of only a handful of boats in. The harbourmaster sees us arriving and runs down to take our lines. "A Brit at last" he cries, laughing.

Indian Summer

 

An Indian Summer envelopes Dieppe in a warm embrace.

Its languid heat clears the broad quayside boulevard of Sunday pedestrians.

Sends them to seek the cool shade of leafy squares. . . .

. . . .beneath airy balconies.

Where birds serenade from the telephone wires.

And church bells peel across the rooftops.

The air hangs torpid and still, in the harbour.

Tomorrow a light easterly breeze is forecast. Bringing Stargazer the potential to play the apparent wind game, on the morning tide.

Light Show

 

Afternoon melts into evening. The low sun mantles the chalk cliffs in folds of earthy ochre, creamy yellow and pure white. 

Casts mysterious shadows amongst the corrugations and caves.

Green pasture dotted with woodland, and chateaux, crowns the living rock. Blue sea laps at its feet.

Stargazer reaches up Channel, a jolie brise on her quarter. Revelling in the splendour of her surroundings.

We moor beneath the wrought iron swing bridge, in Dieppe, for the night.

All Hands. . . .

 

A trawler is alongside the quay. In for repairs to an hydraulic lift. A forklift truck, angle grinder and sledge hammers have been deployed, to good effect. Now there is time to yarn in the sun. To explain how it used to be in the good old days.

And they are within living memory. A fleet of goelettes (schooners) fished the Newfoundland Banks, for Cod, from Fecamp. Every winter, until the two World Wars put an end to the trade. They returned, holds laden with salted down fish, each spring.

Old traditions are kept alive. The handful of near-water trawlers, based here, still land their haul on the historic fish wharf - and sell direct to the public.

Some of the boats live on too. The goelette Milpat has been meticulously restored, her blue topsides gleaming proudly. Fittingly, today she lays off the Halle des Pecheurs (Fishermen’s Market), waiting for the bridge to open. 

All hands are on deck to hoist the heavy main gaff.

The smaller, Profeseur Gosset, lies waiting for her crew.

They soon tumble aboard and waste no time in rigging up and casting off.

The tide carries the two goelettes down towards Cap d’Antifer. Barely a zephyr ruffles a silky sea.

Tomorrow a westerly breeze is forecast to return. The tide begins to set east, past the chalk bluff of Pointe Fagnet, from mid afternoon.

Mellow Fruitfulness

 

On the Fecamp waterfront it is a warm still autumn day. The heavy dew and morning chill driven off by the warmth of the sun.

The angling boats head out to sea, between the harbour moles, to make the most of the settled weather.

I explore the limestone headland, which shelters the port, Pointe Fagnet. A road zig zags its way to the summit. But there is also the enticingly named Matelot's Way. A route which is a mixture of steps and steeply sloping pathway. It leads straight up from the quayside and through verdant woodland. It is very reminiscent of the climb up from the Salcombe ferry landing, to the brow of the hill, at East Portlemouth. 

I emerge, slightly breathless, from the cool shade of the trees and back into bright sunlight. The church of Notre Dame du Salut is before me. Its gold topped tower a daymark, for the port entrance, to the home coming cod fleet of yore

Out on the clifftop, nature has reclaimed the crumbling concrete wartime fortifications of the Atlantic Wall. Nature replacing man's tools for destruction with sweet ripening blackberries.

Whisps of thinning sea fog hang in the air, allowing splashes of sunlight through to glint off the white cliffs. A foretaste of "the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" to come.

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.

Men at Work

 

A mobile crane is parked astride one carriageway of the broad main street. The damaged trawl beam is lifted, from the stern of a fishing boat, and laid on the quayside.  Practiced eyes assess the situation.

Solutions are discussed.

There is nothing for it - to effect a repair, the heavy net will have to be laid out flat. 

The zebra crossing is pressed into service. Traffic queues patiently. Proof, if needed, that St Vaast la Hougue is a fishing port first and a resort town second.

With the help of an angle grinder and arc welder, the gear is set to rights. 

The crane lifts the net once more and lays it neatly on the edge of the quay. 

The traffic rumbles back into life and I walk along the sea wall. Out towards the Vauban tower at la Hougue. They dot the French coastline. Built by Napoleon to defend against a marauding British Navy, in the great age of sail. The days of Nelson's 'wooden wall' square rigged battleships.

I stumble upon the ramshackle yard of a present day shipwright 'en bois.' Restoration projects on the stocks.

Back in port, an American flagged Boreal has arrived on her maiden voyage. They had stopped at a plethora of drying ports on their way up from Treguier, simply because they could, before joining their British flagged sister ship on sea-trials.

Stargazer's next choice of port will be more vague than normal. The lock gates open at midday tomorrow, part way through an eastbound tide. Our plan is to ride that tide, ducking down deep into the Baie de la Seine (where the tide is less strong) for the westbound phase, before climbing back up into the main eastbound Channel tide overnight. We will see where we have got to by the end of that cycle and put into port.