23 Sep 06 - 25 Sep 06 - Lorient France to Dart Marina UK

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23 Sep 06

At midnight between 22. and 23. we were hit by some bad weather with lots of thunder, lighting and massive amounts of rain. Until then we had gone by Genoa and engine and held a speed of 7-8 knots over ground. But due to the weather conditions, I didnt dare to leave the Genoa up, and decided to roll it in. It was a very wet experience :)

This weather lasted for a couple of hours.

The ship is rolling alot and the ride is quite uncomfortable. We are getting the largish waves in from the side and the stern due to our course and without sails this makes the ship roll. Learned from previous experiences, we fortunately already have secured most things below deck, although the duct tape holding the navigation computer in place slipped and Esmeralda had to go on a computer rescue mission again. It suffered no additional damage.

Some additional strips of duct tape and it was fine again :)

In evening we was yet again hit by huge amounts of thunder, lighting and rain right over our heads and all the way around us. Its quite scary as we have a 22m lightning rod sticking up into the sky. We werent hit but there were some spectacular light show going on above our heads.

24 Sep 06

We arrived at the fjord into Darthmouth at about 14:30. Its a very special and nice scenery with lots of boats anchored at buoys, a large warship in the middle, and city mixed with greens on both sides of the narrow fjord.

We quickly found the refueling station, as it was a boat in the middle of the fjord, just next to a floating restaurant. We refueled immediately 1.5 liters for the generator (7800 hours) and 352 liters for the engine (7583 hours).

Originally we planned to stay overnight here to get some sleep, but Dart marina unfortunately only had one spot for us between a floating pontoon (with high pillars) and another large motor boat. As we couldnt get in there because of our boom sticking out on the port side, we opted out of that. We then asked the harbour authorities for the semi commercial public harbour if there would be any space for us, and they were very helpful and let us know that at 17:00 GMT we could use the pontoons that were used by the River Link tourist boats. We had to be out at 09:00 the next day though.

There were still a couple of hours until 17:00 so we decided to get something to eat at the floating restaurant. We could moore along it while eating. Quite nifty I would say. The reason for a restaurant with no pedestrian or car access to be able to live (and seemingly be very popular) is that there are lots of water taxis in this fjord. One can be called on VHF CH 8, another on CH 69 etc. I dont know the price of using one as we didnt have the need.

On the restaurant we ate a bisque of crab, two dishes of red mullets where one were specially cooked by the chef to Esmeralda, asian way... very tasty, and finally sponge (english loose cake with lots of wallnuts in it, in some thin vanilla creme) and creme brulee with some alcohol in it (I dont remember what it was).

Katharina got a home made burger with french fries.

Its an expensive place to eat, but it was very tasty and highly recommended. The waiters are also very awake and checking up on us if we were happy and needed anything else. Surely if you come visit Dartmouth, you must visit this restaurant!

We were allowed to stay along their restaurant until after 17:00, and were then planning on mooring on the River Link floating pontoon.

However as the weather seemed quieter, and we were trying to get back to DK asap, we decided to push off immediately again.

The initial 2 hours of the trip out in the English Channel were rough with waves hitting us directly at front, and the occational coming in from the side making us roll. But after that, the wind disappeared and the sea went very calm.

Now, at the time of writing, we are going 9.2 knots over ground (50N25.96, 1W21.00) with the engine at the usual 1700 revs that normally gives us about 5.8 knots. So we can say that we are in some heavy current going our direction. Currently we are on a bearing of 85 degrees. Since Lorient we have travelled 344 nautical miles which is approx the same as 619 km.

Next stop is Dover, where we hope to meet Richard Gillingham and Paul Newman. Richard you better be there... got a delayed wedding gift for you and Helen! :)

We expect to be in Dover tomorrow midday to afternoon. We still have approx. 113nm to go, and as we will get current against us at some point it is difficult to estimate exactly when we will be there.