Sailing the ENGLISH CHANNEL in winter - FORCE 7 and BIG SWELL | SAILING WAYZGOOSE WARRIOR Ep 12 скачать в хорошем качестве

Sailing the ENGLISH CHANNEL in winter - FORCE 7 and BIG SWELL | SAILING WAYZGOOSE WARRIOR Ep 12

After a beautiful sail from Cowes, as the night was falling, we dropped anchor in Whitecliff Bay, on the east side of the Isle of Wight. It is soon after we anchored that we realised it wasn’t going to be a nice night. It was incredibly rolly making it almost impossible to sleep. Being as nervous as we were about the channel crossing didn’t help either… We went to bed not feeling a 100% confident we could make it to France. Not having done an overnight sail before was a big milestone for us. We both said: let’s try to rest and we’ll decide in the morning! When we got up our energy was totally different. Stuart had been chatting with a friend on the phone and that conversation gave us the push we needed. Weather conditions were great for sailing but it wouldn’t make for a comfortable ride… but we got mentally ready for this and cracked on as we always do. It’s weird because until that last moment when we pulled up the sails we didn’t realised we were actually leaving England. We don’t know when we will be back and it’s so exciting! The prediction was 30 knots north- west winds gusting 35. We put two reefs on the main for the first few hours but the wind picked up and the gusts made it very inconsistent and very difficult to steer the boat so we put a third reef on. As we didn’t want to make any sail changes during the night, not being experienced, and the swell was pretty big (at least for us…) we kept the third reef on overnight. Sailing during the night was probably one of the highlights of the trip. The sky was totally clear and the starry night had nothing to envy from Van Gogh’s. Keeping all the reefs on slowed us down and meant that by the time we were in the bay the wind had already shifted and was coming from the south. It took us around 8 hours to cover those last 20 miles as we were fighting the wind and the current. We were not specting that much current! There were moments where it didn’t even look like we were making any progress. It was quite frustrating but the sight of France in the distance was enough to keep our spirits up. We got to Honfleur’s lock just after low tide and had to wait for 10/15 min until they opened it for us. Getting in the lock was hard work… As it was low tide the channel was very narrow and by the time Wayzgoose was pointing at the entrance she was already a few metres down the river. Our little Yanmar inboard engine proved to be as hardcore as we thought and got us in with no trouble. This was the first lock and one of many yet to come!!! THANK YOU VERY MUCH to all the generous people who use the links below: Ko-fi - https://ko-fi.com/sailingseabird PayPal - https://www.paypal.me/sailingwayzgoose Patreon -   / sailingseabird   Amazon Wishlist - https://www.amazon.fr/hz/wishlist/ls/... You can also follow us on: Facebook -   / sailingseabird   Instagram -   / ___sailingseabird___   Don't forget to like, subscribe and click the notification bell if you want to follow this adventure! Thank you, Stuart & Marina & Seabird