ARC Channel Islands round-up
Looking to sail further afield, but with the reassurance of cruising in company, Martin Cotgreave tackles the inaugural ARC Channel Islands event
The inaugural ARC Channel Islands event
I’ve owned a Bavaria 33 Cruiser for a year or so now and, being moored up at Gosport, have exhausted all the suitable locations for trips away along the South Coast. Going further afield was the next logical step.
My wife Rose had a few reservations about this – sailing in the dark, not being able to see the land and sailing with me!
We read about the inaugural ARC Channel Islands event in PBO and the RYA magazine – Rose immediately seemed more comfortable with this slightly more supervised approach.
To find out a bit more about what we might be letting ourselves in for, ARC ran an excellent seminar during which Roger Seymour from the Hamble School of Yachting spoke, alongside Clare, Sally and Jeremy from the ARC.
The talk really was a wake-up call in terms of moving from the cosy Solent to the remoteness of crossing the English Channel at night, it also gave us a real insight into what the event was all about – sailing with backup and a strong social element.
So, we applied for a place and regrettably found that the rally was full. Big disappointment!
A couple of months later, however, I received a phone call offering us a place – someone had dropped out. I checked the dates with my wife, son and daughter and we were on again!
Quite a lot of hard-earned pennies were spent getting the boat up to the level advised by ARC, which I think was a particularly good thing now that we were striking out further afield.
Passage planning seemed to take me an eternity and was a bit of a rude awakening after the rather scanty planning you can get away with when on familiar home waters.
Getting set
Finally we sailed round to Haslar Marina to meet the crews of the other 28 boats participating. A quick bottom clean by the helpful boys at Sea Lift made sure our boat was as fast as it could be.
Our stay in Haslar Marina proved to be a lot longer than expected – particularly hostile weather set in for the proposed Saturday start day and the following day, leading to our departure being postponed until the Monday.
But we got to know the other participants, as well as ARC organisers Clare, Sally, Jeremy and Rodger, who gave us some great ideas on how to entertain ourselves in Gosport and Portsmouth while waiting.
The ‘Great Bake Off’ proved to be an immensely popular diversion: bake something on your boat, enter it into the competition and then eat as much as you want!
Finally we set off at 04.30 Monday (still dark). The weather was still pretty windy, blowing a steady Force 4-5 and gusting considerably more. The sea was quite unsettled from the stormy conditions of the previous day, but the weather was set to moderate during the passage.
Mal de mer
Sadly it was not long before all of my crew fell victim to the dreaded seasickness and were not much help on deck, so they retired down below and I advised that I’d shout loudly if I needed their assistance.
Ronnie the radar, Arthur the autopilot and I got on fine, and sailed uneventfully for about eight