Trouper’s Blog

Category: Weather

Cherbourg in May

It was all looking so good – we just got onto the platform at Waterloo on time to catch the 1705 to Southampton Airport Parkway and on to Universals where we had a table booked for dinner at Riverside Social at 1945. We put our bags in the rack and sat down, just in time for the guard to announce that a person had just been hit by a train near Vauxhall and the power was off all lines out of Waterloo to allow the emergency services access. Someone else and their family was clearly having a much worse Friday evening, but it left us replanning.

We decided to head back to the flat and drive to the yard and then we could relocate the car to Birdham on Saturday. We were even only 20 minutes late for dinner. Saturday saw us take the morning tide round to Royal Clarence in Portsmouth harbour, where we get a free berth as it is the sister marina of Birdham. Once Trouper was tied up we took an taxi back to Universals to collect the car.

From there we headed to Gosport and Waitrose to provision for the trip to France we had planned. Unfortunately as we left the car park I realised that we had a flat front nearside tyre. I used the BMW supplied temporary repair kit to get the car drivable, dropped Kathryn at the boat, and headed to Birdham to leave the car, and where Graham was going to pick me up and take me back to Gosport. The reason for the trip was to deliver Graham and his partner, and a load of stuff, to Cherbourg to join her eldest son’s new boat on its delivery to Valetta via Lisbon.

Temporary tyre repair

Saturday evening saw us have dinner in the Marina with another friend who lives on the Hamble and we left for Cherbourg early on Sunday morning. It was a motor to start with and then the wind built with the second half of the trip hard on the wind with 20kts over the deck, and a reef in the main and a few rolls tucked away on the genoa. We got in early evening to be met on the pontoon by the delivery crew and proud new boat owner. We went for an excellent dinner in the yacht club on top of the marina office. I’d never been before as it always looked closed from the outside. The furniture was a bit dilapidated with torn covers on chairs, but the food was excellent and there was a super hot charcoal grill that delivered me some fantastic lamb cutlets.

The new boat was in Cherbourg for a 1000nm service by the Nautor Swan Global Service team from Hamble, who’d been working on Trouper the week before. A couple of minor problems had been found during the delivery from Finland, and the rig was due a check. They were due on Tuesday.

Monday saw fair weather, although Kathryn who’d just finished a course of antibiotics for a chest infection was really quite unwell and stayed in bed all day. The rest of us took the new boat, a Swan 51, out for a couple of hours for a quick sail. It’s a beast – and effortlessly quick, but huge.

Big grin whilst having a drive

Swan 51 Deck

Tuesday saw the weather turn with drizzle and over 20kts of breeze. By the time I was heading out for Croissants at half past eight the Swan team were already most of the way through the rig check with one of the team up the rig. Later in the day they were also able to fix the nagging electronics issue that had put the bow and stern thruster out of action – much to the relief of the delivery skipper. I was really impressed by him – he runs a sailing school in Montenegro, and does a few new boat deliveries every year. He and I had a bit of a laugh on Monday when we met heading for the same rope in anticipation of the same possible problem (that never came). He was saying that he wants to come back to the Channel area to cruise as it is unfamiliar ground for him but looks really interesting and demanding. He said, much to my entertainment, that you can have too much sailing in hot weather with no tide. He’s got my details and I’ll be happy to offer him what advice I can if he does come back.

The Swan guys also had a look at our dyneema backstay as it seemed to have stretched a bit – it’s due to to be replaced with new rod once we’re back in the UK, but in the meantime we do need to get back home! They checked the splices, which seem secure and I then wound the bottle screw so that we could get some tension as we’d hit the limit of the backstay hydraulic ram’s range.

On Wednesday and Thursday we were very definitely weathered in – although the local sailing school was still taking out fleets of 10 year olds in Oppies. The harbour steadily filled with broken boats: a Class 40 race took a bit of a pounding from the weather. We took it easy, did some boat chores, a Carrefour run, and I reworked this Website. Pâtisserie might have been consumed.

Excellent Pâtisserie

One of the boat chores was making up new leather covers for the lifeline bottle-screws where they join the pulpit at the bows. These protect the headsails from being damaged by the sharp edges. I cut two but only stitched one in place before the rain returned – the other is next weekend’s job.

Friday saw a weather window for both crews. The new Swan left at about 0200 French time for Roscoff, going north of Alderney and tacking back just off the Casquettes TSS. They got into Roscoff at about 1800, having motor sailed. We left at 1000 French time and made Chichester at about 2000 UK time after an uneventful passage also motor sailed, in an about 12-16kts of SWly. It wasn’t quite enough breeze to keep up a decent passage speed under sail… If we had the top down furling asymmetric that’s on my wish list it would be a different story. We steered 020 from the Cherbourg breakwater until past Bembridge, when I thought we were a bit too far to the East for the west going tide to sweep us home.

By 2030 we were on the Itchenor walk ashore pontoon, and could see the wall of cloud as the next weather system rolled in. Saturday saw us go for a short walk along the harbour path before being discouraged by the rain and returning to our books, and this website. It was properly windy. We saw over 40kts in the gusts and the Nab reported over 50kts. We elected to stay where we were given the weather, as trying to get Trouper into Birdham’s lock, which is a bit of a squeeze at the best of times, seemed like an unnecessary risk with huge gusts beam on – especially once the lovely Sara, the duty lock keeper, had offered to come in early for us on Sunday. She very kindly came in at 0530 so we could lock in an hour after HW. There wasn’t a lot of water under us, and I felt vindicated in my rule of thumb of not trying to get in after HW+1, but we were secure on our berth by 0550 and back to bed for 90 minutes.

June 16, 2026
Spent Hurricanes and adapting plans

We’d been planning to head towards St. Malo from Treguier with a stop in Saint-Quay-Portrieux, which I spent a night in some dozen years ago during Trouper’s first summer tour. That summer Kathryn and I had been beaten by the weather in our attempts to get to the Scillies but had had a glorious time exploring Falmouth harbour, and had gone out with my family from Fowey, and hove to off Gribbin Head to scatter my father’s ashes in a bit of water he loved sailing. He never saw Trouper – but I’m very confident he’d have approved. Anyway Kathryn and I had left Trouper in Falmouth and a week later I headed down with some work friends. Three of us took Trouper back up to Fowey where we had a day walking a bit of the Cornish coast (and my friends had a swim) before we were met by two more friends that evening. We left Fowey at about 9pm, having to pause on the way out for a firework display in the harbour to finish. We sailed straight to St-Quay-Portrieux before heading on to St Malo where one of the crew left us and another joined us, necessitating a day wandering around town and swimming off the beach, before we headed North to Guernsey, and then on to Portsmouth, and thence home.

Our plan had been to retrace some of those steps and have dinner at a lovely restaurant (a Michelin happy eater…) we found in a subsequent trip with other friends in St Malo, whilst getting our passports stamped there and heading home via the Channel Islands. However, looking at the weather forecasts over the last few days (and the Met Office’s excellent ‘Deep Dive’ YouTube videos that discuss the forecast and models in detail) we’ve had a bit of a rethink. Hurricane Erin rapidly grew into a category 5 storm over last weekend and as its remains track across the north Atlantic as a mid latitude low pressure system it is generating a fair bit if uncertainty about next week’s weather. If nothing else it is clear that it’s likely to deliver some significant swell into the western approaches an on into the channel next week.

Ventusky Display of Meteo France Significant Wave Height forecast for Tuesday evening.

We’ve decided to bank the current certainty and relatively calm sea state we have at the moment, so will stay here another night, but then leave for Cherbourg tomorrow (Friday), which will be a long day as we can’t leave very early if we are to catch the fair tide at Guernsey up to Cap del la Hague. We’ll probably get into Cherbourg marina by about 1 am French time. It would make much more navigational sense to go to Guernsey and head home from there, as I did that first year with Trouper, but now we need to visit a Port of Entry to get our passports stamped to leave the EU.

Last night the marina arranged for a local diver to pop round and have a look at Trouper’s propellor. We’d felt a little bit of unusual vibration, which following the weed on the prop the other day we wanted to check out. He was a lovely guy who put two huge (approx 80cm long) fins, mask, snorkel, and a weight belt on over his wetsuit and easily outpaced the quite substantial tide to have a good look. He was quite apologetic that he couldn’t see anything, though he could feel a little movement in the prop shaft. My guess is that the issue the other day has worn the cutlass bearing in the P bracket which supports the prop shaft at the prop. Renewing that is a job for the winter, but not a big deal. I’m pleased to know there’s nothing tangled down there before a long couple of day’s where we’re likely to be motor sailing.

Once in Cherbourg we can easily get the paperwork done, as the French border police visit the marina office a couple of times a day. We might head straight across on Saturday, once the passports are stamped, but that depends on the forecast. At the moment Sunday looks a fair bit less attractive with a headwind, and rougher sea state, though Saturday will be more motor-sailing with little breeze. But we’ll review that plans in Cherbourg, the forecasts are moving about a fair bit at the moment, and whilst we can have good certainty for 36h or so much further out is shifting about a bit.

We’ll probably head back to Poole, which we’ve not been to for some years, and offers an easy all states entrance. Studland bay might be an option on the way in but we’ll have to see how it looks. The current forecast has it looking very welcoming until the small hours of Sunday when 0.8m waves will start rolling in from the South East, leaving the beach as a lee shore, which would make it anything but a restful night.

Inevitably there is paperwork to complete for our UK entry, though the Borders agency introduced quite a good online system a couple of years ago. It has the odd niggle (why will it remember the passport details of anyone I’ve ever entered, but require me to input my contact details as skipper by hand each time?) but it’s actually quite simple to use. Once in Poole we can have an easy week heading back to Chichester. Perhaps a night or two in South Deep in Poole (a favourite of mine), if there’s room on an August Bank Holiday.

August 21, 2025
Weather

The weather has dominated the most of the last week. Douarnenez was lovely but the swell into the visitors’ pontoon for the second and third nights resulted in lot of groaning warps, if no actual discomfort (Kathryn might disagree as the groaning warps kept her awake). On Wednesday we left reasonably early and headed out for a passage through the Raz du Sein. It was a long motor sail to windward to get to the headland and drop south through the Raz. The Raz du Sein is a notorious tidal race, but other than a bit of slightly confused seas on the approach we passed through smoothly – though we did test out our newly recanvassed cockpit spray hood – which provided a very warm an snug spot in the cockpit. It only saved us from one wave’s worth of spray – but that’s quite enough for it to have earned it’s keep.

We ended the day in Loctudy, a marina in a small town south (and east) of Pointe de Penmarc’h. The pilot books and almanac all observe that the Pointe de Penmarc’h is the gateway to better weather as you move into South Biscay. It was glorious in Loctudy though the first morning we were there is was very foggy ’till about midday.The marina had nice facilities and an excellent chandlers that had stock of all sorts of specialist parts: needless to say they had the belts that I’d been looking for, and had several interesting looking brackets for clamping onto stainless tube, and lengths of tubing. I was hopeful I’d be able to cobble some sort of temporary starlink mount, so I took the bits of the broken one in, and with a fair bit of gesticulation explained the issue. This is when things took a turn for the better: the bits were whisked off into a back office, there was a bit of a discussion, a man in overalls appeared and joined in. I was led into a workshop behind the chandlers where they clearly fixed outboards and the like and went someway to explain the stock: these were people who made things… 20 minutes later my new friend in overalls had drilled a hole though the fitting and installed a nice big bolt to hold it together. With the addition of a little glue to stop it rotating around the new bolt the job was done and our Starlink is back in its spot on the aft rail.

Starlink back in it’s spot

On Friday we hopped across the bay to Concarneau. There was little sailing to be had, as it was very still, and there was a little bit of a deadline to get there before the market shut down at 1300. This is also a TransEurope marina (a federation of independent marinas that offer a 50% discount for up to 5 nights to berth holders from another member), which was sort of planned as it looked like we’d be staying a few nights, to wait out some weather. It’s been moderately windy, but has rained hard on and off for the past few days (I write this on Monday afternoon) and there has been some serious (over 5m) swell offshore. We’ve explored the town, it’s fishing museum in the island citadel in the centre of the harbour, and taken the bus to Pont Aven on a sightseeing trip whilst dodging the worst of the weather. Assuming the weather forecast delivers then tomorrow should be fine, a bit on the still side, but will let us move on to Lorient and towards the Baie de Quiberon. This bay looks like a truly lovely spot with lots anchorages and the Gulf de Morbihan, an inland sea full of islands accessed through a narrow entrance which has been on my list of places to visit ever since we started researching the trip.

July 21, 2025
Leaving the English Channel Behind

We left Roscoff after 4 nights on Tuesday, having waited out some weather – nothing too violent but some rain and it was a bit breezy). We spent one day doing boat admin and laundry, another exploring Roscoff (very good Crepes and local Breton Cidre) and then testing out the Bromptons with a cycle to the next town on Monday. The bikes did well though there were a fair few hills, and whilst it turned out Monday was the town’s closing day we had a nice amble around and found another supplier of excellent crepes. Our neighbour in the marina was an émigré Englishman who’d spent 20 years building his boat, which he had set up for long distance offshore single handed racing – we had a good chat about boats.

Tuesday could have gone better. After a couple days of stiff northerly there was a fair sea running into the bay, and the northern Brittany coast generally. From Roscoff we had to get to the north of Ile de Batz before turning west to get to L’Aber Wrac’h. I didn’t take the opportunity to unzip the stack pack and hoist the mainsail whilst we were sheltered by Ile de Batz and once outside it got quite bumpy and rolly rather quickly and it wasn’t really going to be safe or wise to try and unzip the sailbag (which is above head height). So we did without – it was mainly a light head wind so the sail wouldn’t provide much drive if we motorsailed, but it would have damped our motion a lot and it was distinctly uncomfortable for a while. We were joined at a couple of points by more solitary dolphins, who lifted the mood on board. We very happy to get behind the shelter of the rocks at L’Aber Wrac’h entrance, which is watched over by the most improbably tall lighthouse (Phare in French). At 77m tall it’s apparently the tallest in Europe. The French do really good navigation marks, and lighthouses – there are lots of stone towers built to either mark rocks or form part of a transit (a pair of things you can see, a reasonable distance apart, that when aligned lead you along a fixed track, allowing you to correct for cross currents).

Ile Vierge Phare, off L’Aber Wrac’h entrance

L’Aber Wrac’h river was gorgeous, the marina was friendly and helpful, though out of the main town, with just a sailing school and a few restaurants and bars. It did have what appeared to be nice clean showers, but with such a stench of sewage that without any real discussion we elected to shower on board. L’Aber Wrac’h was also the first new port of the trip: I’d never been this far west on the French coast before.

Dawn at L’Aber Wrac’h

We left at 0700 this morning heading west to Chenal Du Four. This is an infamous bit of water in sailing circles and describes a safe passage through a warren of rocks inshore of Oussant (Ushant) with huge tidal flows and what can be extremely rough conditions.

The Chenal du Four, and our route

Fair to say it didn’t live up to its reputation this morning when it was glassy calm, with no wind or really any waves. Which is as well as the computer navigation software lost it’s connection to our GPS somewhere off Le Four Phare and it took me a while to cobble together a work around, leaving Kathryn on deck with an ipad, with charting software and a GPS connection but without our planned track, and the remote control for the autopilot. She kept us in the right spot, whilst I got the location data back to the computer and from there onto the deck displays that show course and distance to the next waypoint. It’s the first time I’ve had such an issue with the software at sea in over ten years – normally it’s characterised by how reliable it is. Needless to say after resetting a few things once we got in it’s all working again.

Le Four Phare

Once we got round Point St Mathieu at the southern end we turned towards Brest and the outer approached of the harbour. Given that the Royal Navy kept the French fleet pinned in Brest for four years during the Napoleonic wars I was a bit self conscious flying our large blue ensign as we motor sailed in (the main went up early this morning – not making that mistake again). We elected to anchor in a bay to the north (we’re the green boat icon in the bottom right of the chart above) and, after lunch, went ashore by tender to purchase patisserie. I’m ashamed to say I think it’s the first time I’ve inflated the tender in about 18 months – it wasn’t used least season at all, and hardly the year before. It’s going to get lots of use this summer. I’m writing this at anchor, connected by a starlink dish lying loose in the cockpit, having had a steak dinner, washed down with Rose and finished off with the patisserie. The washing up awaits…

July 9, 2025