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
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 originally considered crossing straight from the English mainland to Brest but decided to head to the Isles of Scilly on day 20, a decision we are still happy with as the Isles of Scilly are beautiful. If anything we wish we could have spent more time there.
After our little morning wake up we set off around 8 am. The plan was for the whole route to take a little over 24 hours, so an 8am start meant we would arrive during the day to Brest.
The whole track was around 140 nautical miles, took 1 day 5 hours with an average speed of 4.7 knots.
It’s always hard to put across what sailing out to sea is like in words, so here are two short clips from different points in time during the crossing.
As we left the Isles of Scilly the sea was extremely flat, as the isles were protecting us from the swell.
As we gained distance from the Isles the swell started to pick up a bit. Here is a video from 14:30 on day 24, 6 hours in.
As we got further into the channel the swell continued to build slightly, and in this clip from 22:44 on day 24, you can see some more rolly larger swells.
Crossing the shipping lanes is always a little bit of fun, especially in the channel where they can be quite busy. You can actually see a large container ship in the background on the video above.
AIS is invaluable here, as all the large ships are required to transmit their location (lots of small boats including Hannah do too). AIS data is displayed within the Navionics app that we use for navigation. Below you can see 2 ships in the channel, their track for the next 20 minutes, as well as where we are.
As we approached France, we put our courtesy flag up (thanks Syliva for hand sewing them all) as the coastline was lit up with lighthouses (very hard to take a picture of). For anyone that doesn’t know, the courtesy flags are a small flag for each country for use when you are in their waters saying that you agree to abide by their laws.
We had to navigate through a rather tidal channel called “Chenal Du Four” which is around 14 nautical miles long and narrows down to roughly 2 nautical miles.
As planned the tide was in our favour, whisking us toward Brest adding around 4 knots to our speed. The top speed on the crossing as a whole was 11 knots over land.
The final part of the passage took us into the entrance to Brest where we tacked all the way up to the rather larger harbour, within which sits Marina du Château.
Initially, our call over VHF to the marina told us there was no room on the visitor pontoons as there was a big event going on that day. We needed to enter the country and the EU so we negotiated a short stop on the fuel pontoon for us to visit the immigration office that is only a 4 minute walk away.
Upon returning the staff had found a place for us within the marina using the spot of another boat that was away for the month, so time to relocate. Our marina track ended up looking a little like this.
Once moored up, we started to relax in the midst of the heatwave, making use of the new handmade wind scoop for the forward hatch (thanks Sylvia).
As mentioned above, we arrived amidst a festival, it also happened to be Bastille day, but we will write about that in the next post! 🙂
On Day 22 we were exploring Tresco island, but as August drew closer, we needed to try and get across the channel and Biscay with some good weather. Tomorrow (day 24) looked good for a channel crossing, so we wanted to prepare by getting as far south and east in the Isles of Scilly as possible.
Our anchorage of choice was on St Marys south side, and the route we chose took us through the Isles.
We arrived at our anchorage fairly late and it was quite busy so we anchored on the outside which lead to a slightly rolly night.
Keen to explore more of the Isles of Scilly before needing to carry on the with the journey to Porto we switched anchorages to St Helens pool, and anchorage that should be protected from all directions of swell.
Our current anchorage of the Eastern Isles also didn’t look great for the coming days.
Our little hop took us out, and counter clockwise (west) along the top of the Isles. There wasn’t much wind, and the sails were quite flappy, but we needed to move!
This anchorage was quite beautiful, as you can see the open ocean to the north, east and west, yet the swell doesn’t reach you due to the shallows.
There were points where we were considering not heading the Isles of Scilly, as we are on a schedule to reach Porto, Portugal at the start of August. We thought it would be a shame to miss out though, and the long-range forecast looked good for a hop to the Scillies, follows by a crossing of Biscay or to Brest, France.
We once again used Fast Seas weather routing for this crossing, and we included the details of this in our Nic 38 owners forum reply.
The route was all on a single tack out along the cornish coast, past lands end and straight to the Isles. Our track matched this rather nicely.
We did lose the wind for a little bit as we approached Lands End. We could see the wind on the sea in the distance so motored up to it, and that gave us the opportunity to grab this picture of Lands End from the sea.
We headed into the Isles of Scilly at the closest point to us, the Eastern Isles.
The sea continued to look like the picture above (nice and flat) just with short rolling ocean swell.
There was a lovely little anchorage which we shared with 3 other boats, and a family of seals.
We trekked around the nearest island and on our way back from land in the dinghy the seals were all relaxing in the seaweed close to shore and we snapped this great picture.
We anchored at St Michael’s Mount to protect ourselves from some of the North Easterly winds, but day 19 brought some calm.
We wanted to head to Penzance to top up our diesel and water tanks and to try and pick up a replacement Calor gas bottle. We also had some friends that may come to visit so wanted an easy and safe place to leave the dingy!
We just sailed across with the geona again, but it took no time at all.
You can see this track includes 1) anchoring outside the harbour to wait for fuel 2) heading into the harbour behind the sil, turning around and coming back to the fuel barge 3) heading back out of the harbour to anchor back up where we would be spending the night.
We headed to shore in the dingy through the outer harbour which is not behind a sil and headed for some dinner being picked up by our friends that were driving. When reaching Newly we ate at Mackerel Sky Cafe. Delicious, but no picutres.
We managed to find a Calor gas bottle at the local morisons, did a little shop, had some on land showers before heading back to Hannah.
Before setting off this mainly looked like a big sail upwind as we were in a northerly wind.
After 6 hours of sailing and a couple of tacks, we found ourselves nearing Penzance.
It was lovely and flat in the bay, even quite some way out and made for some very nice sailing.
Penzance Harbour is behind a sil and at the time of our arrival the sil was closed (we already knew this). We had the option of using a mooring ball outside the harbour, anchoring outside the harbour, and using a different anchorage.
St Michael’s Mount looked like it gave good protection (and a nice view) so we headed to it!
You can see us approaching the Mount below.
The anchorage was rather windy, we were sheltered there with 3 other boats, one of them arrived with us, re-anchored a few times and then decided to leave for somewhere else.
We stayed put in the winds, charged up a bit with the wind turbine and generally relaxed.
(In this sort of wind a trip to the shore in the dinghy is not really much fun)
By the evening, the wind had dropped and it was rather lovely.
We wanted to break out the larger journey around to Penzance. We found an anchorage (Housel Cove) on Navionics that looked like it should give us pretty good protection from the swell and wind for the night and headed off!
This was an easy sail again only on a reefed genoa as we were trying to sail at 2-3 knots so we could fish with the paravane as we went.
Although we were ready for the fish, the fish were not there. Even while trying to sail slowly, you can see the bend in the rod as we occasionally hit 4+ knots.
The journey took only 4.5 hours and we found ourselves in Housel Cove which is overlooked by Housel Hotel and Lizard Lighthouse.
We were in the bay all by ourselves, and also had a beach that seemed to be mostly inaccessible from the land, so private for us!
We both got a little artistic on this day.
Kathryn took this very nice looking picture of the deck while we were sailing
Adam took this rather blurry, but perhaps nice to look at picture of Lizard Lighthouse at night from the bay.
Back from a wedding, we wanted to get out of the pricey mooring that we were at and get back to anchoring, so on to the Helford river (a short hop across the bay).
As you can see on the track, we decided our trip would be far too quick, even only sailing with the genoa out.
So we did a few tacks and tried to get as close as possible to a beach where @brendonprince_ was having a little SUP (as he advertised on Instagram).
