The Flying Lentil The log of Festina Lente, Sigma 38

Saturday dawned like any other . You perhaps dont know the drill – but for the last few weeks it has been  glance at the weather , look at yesterdays list of things to do, cross off a few, add a load more and get to work . Hang on though, Saturdays weather was different . We still had the  usual head winds down Channel – but  it promised northerlies in the Bay of Biscay from midweek  and a 12 hour NW wind from Saturday evening to get us started. The small problem was that we had about 3 days work to get done before we could leave , but a maximum of 12 hours to squeeze it all in if we were not to miss our “slot”.

Reader , we did it! We finally cast off at midnight  (!), and motored down the Solent putting the boat into sea going order so that by Yarmouth the boat was in some shape to start our trip- even if we were completely cream crackered.

Our NW wind lasted til mid channel and gradually headed us so that we could just lay the Ortac channel to the West of Alderney (I can now tell you that this is fairly safe – with the least overfalls if you pass close W of the rock) but we ran out of tide just short of Guernsey and decided to take a short rest. This turned into an overnight rest as the port water tank had leaked – hopefully now fixed  (presumably it too was suffering from bashing along on our ear) – and we are setting out West again in a few minutes.