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Going
East
In
all these years of sailing in and around the Solent, I have never ventured
along the coast East of Chichester, so on one of our summer charters in
2001 sheer curiosity propelled us through the Looe Channel to
Littlehampton. This was in August at
neaps, with HW morning & evening and modest westgoing tides in the
morning and eastgoing in the afternoons. Perfect for rounding Selsey Bill
in the afternoon going east and back the following morning.
Our
crew of four have now chartered for ten years and have extensively cruised
in the Westcountry (3 years), North Brittany (2 years), Channel
Islands/Cherbourg /St Vaast (3 years), Honfleur (once) and West to
Weymouth twice. This adds up to more
than ten but recently we have decided that it is better value having two
whacks of four days than a single one of a week if only because one is
spreading the risk of running
into bad weather. We have over the years been stormbound in St Vaast in
June in a Force 7 NE for three full days, in Weymouth for a day in a force
8 Easterly and in Falmouth for a day also in an Easterly 7/8.
Not to mention an alarming trip back from Honfleur in June 2000
when we were completely misled by a favourable forecast and did the last
half of the trip in a force 9 SW. and
were very glad to tie up in the marina in Gosport close to those
horrible looking but comforting blocks of flats.
So
the four of us took over the boat (Brunnhilda, a Bavaria 35) at midday on
Monday 13th August and had a very pleasant sail down to
Bembridge where we had yet another memorable meal at Baywatch On The Beach
and left for Littlehampton after a leisurely breakfast. In planning the passage round Selsey Bill one has two
options, one is to go outside the Owers light and the other is to go
through the narrow Looe Channel which is about 1.25 miles off the Bill but
saves anything up to 7 miles (less from Bembridge).
The channel itself is marked at its west end (the narrowest) by a
green conical buoy to Starboard (Boulder) and a red can to the north east
(Street) the two being only 300 yards apart and runs west to east.
As one’s course is either due east or due west and the two buoys
are roughly in a NE - SW line, the effective width of the channel is only
about 150 yards. Just under 2
miles beyond these two buoys lies the Mixon beacon to the ENE which marks
the Mixon rocks that jut out from the shore and although one can then
steer direct for the harbour entrance of Littlehampton, it is useful to
bear in mind that the next mark is the East Borough Head Lt buoy which is
6.5 miles due east of the Boulder buoy.
Once clear of this mark there are no further problems so one could
say that this marks the eastern end of approach to the Looe channel.
Anyway,
on the day in question, the weather was benign with a force 3-4 southerly
though visibility was poor round the Bill, Selsey itself being invisible,
but once past the Mixon, the weather cleared and we had a cloudless sky
and favourable winds. Littlehampton
was only 8 miles off but as we couldn’t get in for another three hours
we ambled up and down the coast, sightseeing.
The entrance is not easy to pick up for a stranger, but once in, we
secured to the visitors pontoon which is alongside the eastern wall of the
harbour and well before the footbridge.
What
can one say of Littlehampton? As
a snug berth it was fine but the town itself, which largely dates from the
30s is uninspiring and devoid of culinary excitements unless one is a
devotee of Indian takeaways of which there is a wide variety.
The town itself is on the east side of the river Arun, the only
activity on the west side being a sailing club and a number of boatyards (Hillyards
among them) which looked as if they had been severely damaged by near
misses in WW 2 Air Raid, patched up and left.
The only item of interest was the modern pedestrian bridge which
was actually opened the following morning to let a dredger out and proved
to be telescopic, thus answering a question that had been nagging us since
walking over it the previous evening.
Departing
the following morning on the ebb, again with a cloudless sky, did not
engender any acute withdrawal symptoms though perhaps there were some
delights that had been hidden from us.
Perhaps the 15th Indian takeaway is in the good curry guide.
A constant problem when one starts off to the East is the knowledge
that the return trip is going to be against the prevailing wind and this
day proved to be no exception to the rule, though with a gently favourable
tide, a force 3-4 Westerly and a beautiful sunny day, who cares?
Only to the West, off Selsey Bill, it looked murky.
The plan was to make a long leg out to sea on starboard followed by
a long leg back on port, in both cases being lee-bowed by the tide, by
which time we might be at least up to the East Borough Head buoy and a few
more shorter tacks would take us past the Mixon, at which point we would
probably have to put the motor on to get through the narrowest part of the
channel and then: bingo, into the Eastern Solent.
The
first part went well, with two perfect legs in glorious weather but with a
slightly freshening wind and increasing murk to the west.
A reef went into the main, followed by a second as the wind
continued to freshen and well before the Mixon, we were treble reefed
& motoring hard against a force 6/7 dead on the nose.
Visibility was continuing to close in (we had no radar) but the
Boulder was our next waypoint on the GPS and by keeping it straight ahead,
the tide and the faithful Volvo took us through the channel though
visibility was down to 50 yards. (We never did spot the buoy on the north
side of the channel which couldn’t have been more than 100yards away)
None of us had ever experienced before the combination of fog and
near gale force wind and none of us want to repeat it.
Once through the channel, the wind eased a bit to a 5/6 and backed
slightly and the sea, though still most uncomfortable, was also easier.
The visibility though was no better and we were anxious to keep clear of
the deep water channel so set a course directly towards the Horsesand Fort
knowing that if the bearing of the fort did not rise above 290 we were
north of trouble. A mile short of the fort, the terrifying, deep burp of a
large ship came from over the left shoulder followed by the ghostly shape
of a huge container ship inward bound and probably only 200 yards from us. Strangely, the passage of this huge ship seemed to clear the
air to show that we were precisely where the GPS said we were, just short
of the Fort and North of the deep water channel.
The rest of the trip proved to be a welcome anti climax for one
could actually see the shore and though the tide had turned against us we
were in sheltered water & finished up with a well earned drink and a
meal at the Folly.
Lessons?
The weather conditions that day were so strange that I don’t know
if one could profit from the
experience other than to take to boating on the river, but the obvious
ones are that wind against tide in the Looe Channel give rise to an
extremely nasty sea, that Macmillans advice that one should keep south of
the Owers Lanby in bad weather or in bad visibility (and always at night)
is sound and that ones own handheld GPS in a charter boat is worth its
weight in gold. In our
defence, so to speak, the weather east of Selsey was perfect, the fog was
not forecast and though the wind was forecast to freshen, it was only to 4
gusting 5 round headlands.
Would
we go again? No.
Been there, done that!