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Adam & Kathryn
Adam and Kathryn with Hannah, post 2022 splashSpeeding along toward St Michaels MountDaisy coming to visit the boat in SaltashSunset at St Helens Pool, Isles of ScillyHannah Penn written in the sand on Great Ganilly by KathyrnHannah moored on DC visitor pontoon in Dartmouth post 2022 splash Sunset with dolphins and or porpoises in SpainA collection o pictures from the first month or so
We are still planning on getting to Porto, Portugal for the 2nd August, so we need to work our way down the Spanish and Portuguese coast, while also finding time to relax, and enjoy some of the coastline, as well as break up the sailing.
We came up with a very detailed plan, as can be seen on the whiteboard to the right.
This plan started off with some more time near A Coruna after the Biscay crossing to relax. Followed by a 60 nautical mile dash around the corner of Spain to get away from some 1.7 to 1.9 meter swell that was meant to be coming in.
So the 26th of July or Day 36 was the day to set off!
We set off around just before noon as the morning was showing very light wind. The sails went up straight out of the anchorage, and we set course on our heading for the first half of the hop.
Fishing
Fishing jumped to the top of our minds again, and we set up both rods, one looking for mackerel and one looking for bigger fish.
We were quickly successful for mackerel catching one rather swiftly.
Mackeral from the crossing
Catching some rope
The other rod wasn’t having so much fun, there was lots of seaweed and other stuff in the water.
At least we were doing our little bit to clean up the oceans…
We were trying a whole range of different lures on the main line, as we are both fairly new to catching anything other than Mackerel and wanted to work out what was best for fihsing while underway.
We settled on a 10cm jerk bait lure (Read about jerk baits here) which seemed to work quite well at 3-6 knots, not putting to much strain on the line, but also managing to stay at the right depth.
After 5 hours of having the line of having the line out with this lure for the first time something bit! We quickly got to the rod, which was in a rod holder, and started trying to reel whatever was at the end in. We generally prepared for landing our biggest fish yet (not a mackerel), with our landing net etc.
Braided fishing line with half a knot in the end
A few minutes passed as we were fighting the fish, occasionally seeing it pop out of the water. It was getting closer and closer to the boat. Unfortunately, when it was about 20 meters back the line became slack, and reeling it in we discovered that the knot attaching the main line to the leader line had either pulled through or snapped.
You can see the reel, with half of the knot still in tack in the image to the right.
Not only did we not land our first big fish, but unfortunateely this fish is probably now stuck with this lure and line.
Another late anchor
The wind was lighter than we would have liked, so we lost some time during our sailing compared with our plan. It also dropped off sooner than expected and we had to motor for the last part of this hop.
All of this led to us once again anchoring in the dark, this time around 2am.
Biscay was the biggest crossing in the first months of the trip. As the crow flies the bay is around 300 nautical miles wide. Our channel crossing from the Isles of Scilly to Brest was closer to 100 nautical miles.
As the crossing was going to take a few days, the main task in the days and weeks ahead of setting off was finding a weather window that both provided wind for sailing and a bit of comfort too (not too much swell).
The window we were aiming for primarily had a north or northwesterly wind around 10 to 20 knots with 1.2 to 1.7m swell, but also had a high pressure passing through the bay around the evening of day 33 which would give us a big lull before some easterly wind to finally bring us to A Coruna, Spain.
We used Fast Seas weather routing to come up with the initial route, and we used our Garmin InReach throughout the crossing to update this weather routing, and also to get weather updates. The route remained mostly the same throughout the crossing, although we ended up crossing in around 20 hours less than the initially predicted 3 days 12 hours. (Very satisfying).
Throughout the crossing, we literally saw hundreds of dolphins, too many to count, in 10s of different pods throughout the various days.
I may have seen more dolphins I'm the past 3 days than I have in my entire life 🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬 pic.twitter.com/1MvreFM9MB
Been working on a little SMS based weather tool for use with satalite communicators such as the Garmin Inreach So far only doing sun and moon rise and sets, as well as moon phase, but looking promising! ☀️🌘🌕 pic.twitter.com/y4PESLiIuY
In order to shorten the Biscay crossing, similar to our thinking when leaving the Isles of Scilly, we wanted to get as far south as possible without actually entering the bay too much. We looked at our options and the time that we had before our weather window and decided to aim for Crozon.
This was a short hop down the coast, but we were beating into the wind to get out of Brest which took quite some time.
We took this opportunity to have a day out on land.
The aquarium was about an hours walk from the marina, so we stocked up on icey cold water, and started walking amidst a bit of a heat wave (around 30 degrees Celcius).
Our walk took us along the rest of Brest harbour, then along a busy-ish road with a cycle path, and eventually through an industrial area until finally reaching Oceanopolis.
The aquarium is split up into 3 main different zones. Tropical, Polar and a zone for the local area.
There were penguins.
Lots and lots of penguins.
Seals.
The cutest of sea otters.
And of course, small fish pretending to be Nemo.
While browsing the shop we found a very cute seal which is now part of team Hannah Penn (also known as Team Saily Mc Sail Face).
Keep an eye out for this cute one in photos to come.
On the way back we tried out a french bike rental app called Donkey republic.
Not many bikes available that worked, most parking places would generally have 5 or so bikes, but only one that wasn’t broken / that you could unlock.
This shortened the trip back quite a bit. Very glad the bike was electric assist.
Owners Group Reply: Polar File for weather routing
Has anyone managed to put together a realistic ‘polar file’ for the Nicholson 38? It enables one to interact with weather routing software like Fastseas etc. Any info appreciated, thanks
As I said we have been testing this out with some routes, and had a few learnings.
The main one of those is that if you are fighting against swell, or “larger” waves and chop everything becomes less accurate
Plymouth to Falmouth
This was up wind all of the way with a single tack part way along as the wind changed slightly. We were sailing on our closest point of sail the whole way, so 60 degrees for the conditions we were in is pretty accurate. This was 1m swell from the west and 15-25 knts generally from the west. With less swell I imagine we could get closer to the wind that 60 degrees.
The route planned was 12h17m and our track for the routed part was 13h, so pretty close
On this screenshot, you can also see 2 other waypoints (blue pins). These were the tacking points for 2 other polars. The right most of these was our custom polar that we made a while back, this it turns out would have been too pessimistic. The leftmost of these was with a 45 degrees as the closest point of sail.
Penzance to the Isles of Scilly
Routed time 8.5h, Tracked time 8 hours We cheated slightly here between points 5 and 6 on the route where we found ourselves with no wind and we motored around the corner a little to find it again. This might explain why we beat the routed time.
Isles of Scilly to Brest
We had a pretty simple route for this which was mainly downwind.
We ended up hacking to do the odd gybe and gull-winged at points.
The route here was 1d5h and our track along the route was actually only 24h.
At a guess, this was due to the following 1-1.6m swell the whole way pushing us a bit faster. Max land speed here for us was actually 11knts
This meant that not only was the marina in Brest quite full, but also the whole harbour area was extremely busy with classic yachts, ships, music, food and drink.
A tall ship in the harbour of Brest during the festival
As we were walking around the festival we kept hearing bagpipes in the background and wondered where they were coming from.
We ended up at the music stage, but there were no bagpipes to be seen initially.
It turns out they were warming up around the corner, but of course quite loud as bag pipes generally are.
When they came to perform, the band was not only made up of bagpipers, but also people that seemed to be playing what looked like a small clarinet, but it turned out to be (we think) a set of practice chanters.
All quite loud, but also enjoyable.
We walked past what seemed like hundreds of food establishments, all of which were jam-packed.
Eventually, we settled on a pizza place right next to the marina jetty that Hannah was moored up on.
They let us know that firework would be happening at around 11pm, so we set on a bench across the road, and waited both for the fireworks and our pizza with some drinks in hand.
We captured the climax of the fireworks display for you to enjoy.
The restaurant forgot to bring our pizza out (probably distracted by the fireworks) but we collected it shortly after they finished, and headed back to the boat, warming it slightly and then devouring it at about midnight.
