Welcome to the Maunie of Ardwall blog

This is the blog of Maunie of Ardwall. After a six-year adventure sailing from Dartmouth to Australia, we are now back in Britain.

Thursday 21 July 2011

From Brittany to Guernsey

Low water at Treguier

We left Treguier just after high water at 10.00 BST and motored down the river and inside Heux lighthouse before heading North-west towards Guernsey.





Mid-morning snacks ahoy!


The weather was just relentlessly damp, with lots of drizzle and visibility of not much more than a mile: we just glimpsed the lighthouse at the Roches Douvres through the mist. The wind was dead astern and just a Force 3 so, after an hour with the spinnaker up, we put then engine on and motor-sailed for the next 3 hours. An otherwise dull passage was enlivened at 15.30 when sea-life-mad Laura finally spotted dolphins after about 7 years of sailing with us. We had about a dozen Common Dolphins (with some very young calves) with us for about 10 minutes, with much whooping from the crew.


Guernsey appears out of the mist


We arrived at St Peter Port at about 18.30 so joined a huge, 8-deep, raft of boats at the waiting pontoon until there was enough water at the sill to enter Victoria Marina.



Today, joy of joys, we’ve had bright sunshine all day! So we’ve dried all the damp foul-weather gear and had time to explore ashore. The La Vallette museum of the German occupation, housed in a WW2 German underground bunker, really brought home the challenges faced by the 23,000 civilians here during the 5-year occupation. In light relief we’ve just had an excellent meat at La Nautique restaurant and are planning the next couple of days – we’ll probably do a daysail to Sark tomorrow and then sail back to Dartmouth on Saturday.

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