‘She went like a bronco, throwing her bow to the western sky’ – Dick Durham

Dick Durham considers the disappointment of passage planning for a journey that may never come

There’s nothing like planning, and of course, it had all been planned a year in advance. Application forms filled in, a berth allocated, pilot book purchased. Documents of competence, proof of insurance and passport numbers all posted to the harbour authorities in Brittany.

The Brest Festival… how we were all looking forward to it. Then came the armchair passage rationale: if the wind was offshore, we’d sail along the coast to Falmouth, where good friends waited. From there, we’d sail south to the west side of Ushant.

If the breeze was anywhere from the east, we’d go straight there. Even if it was south-west, which was likely, we could fetch across from the Needles to the Channel Islands and make our way port-hopping along the Breton coast… it was going to be July, after all.

And so, when the time came, I arrived at Martyn and Bryony Mackrill’s lovely detached home, nestling beneath Tennyson Down on the Isle of Wight. After two days of watching their garden hedges nod, twist and thrash through the beading rain hammering at their windows, one of the many weather apps we studied virtually on the hour suggested the south-west Force 6 would back south, giving us a slant.

So, we loaded all our kit aboard their newly restored classic 40ft Bermudian cutter, Peregrine, a 40ft Fife, and watched as her top hamper, even in the sheltered waters of her pontoon berth above the swing bridge in Yarmouth, listed her to port in the cloud-racing wind.

But, it was going to go south, and so we motored out of Yarmouth and picked up a mooring off the harbour in order to set the mainsail and tuck in some reefs. However, the only force which matched the strong wind was the spring ebb, which had Peregrine sailing around the mooring to such a degree that we could not steady her head to wind to make sail, and so we decided to motor to Poole: the ebb would do the work, after all. It would put us up to weather, we reasoned. It was a good tidal gate from there, we told ourselves. And as we all stoically acknowledged, in silence, we would have commenced our plan.

Through the North Channel, she went like a bronco, throwing her bow to the western sky and her stern to the top of Hurst lighthouse. Blazing summer sunshine could not take the chill off our soaked oilskins, but we made short work of the passage, even through such heavy seas, which picked up even more off Hengistbury Head, in just seven metres, when we watched dolphins burst whole through the sides of the waves.

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Anchored in Poole’s Wych Channel, we fell upon Bryony’s cod mornay, new potatoes and mange tout.

We slept well that night and woke to a grey dawn and more analysis. First of all, Martyn checked his own preferred app: ‘Oh flipping hell, it’s saying south all right, but now Force 7.’

Then Bryony clicked on her phone and started racking through the hours and the days ahead…

‘But Martyn, it’s saying Force 6 in two days…’

‘Yes, but going back to south-west and look…’ Martyn fingered further on, ‘bloody Force 8 by Thursday.’

As an invited crew, I felt it was beyond my remit to offer a view, but was nevertheless glad when Bryony asked: ‘What do you think, Dick?’

I, too, had been listening to forecasts and even the landlubber’s weather, which reported the jet stream had been stuck too far south for settled summer breezes.

‘It’s rotten luck, but there’s no sign of the weather settling down. I would forget Brest and enjoy a cruise in sheltered waters.’

It was heresy, a passage plan that shall not speak its name, and a horrible deflation of expectation. But I also sensed relief. We double-reefed the main and had a cracking sail. Back to the Solent.

‘I feel a fraud,’ said Martyn.

We all did, until we later learned that we were one of 200 boats which cancelled their plans for Brest last season.

That’s cruising!

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