S/Y Belisama: Belisama back to France, Dunkirk, 17 August

Tuesday 18 August 2020

Belisama back to France, Dunkirk, 17 August

The journey from Den Helder to Dunkirk was 152 miles long, when planned on the plotter, a 30+ hour ride with the expected back reach winds. This was without counting with a few encounters along the way...

First encounter, the cloud below:

Arcus cloud

Guess what happen when you encounter such things...

Let start the afternoon with a long ride with full back reach wind and the asymmetric spinnaker mounted like a symmetric spinnaker on a boom. With an established 5 m/s wind (10 knots), Belisama happily makes it to 6 knots, comfortably steered by the pilot.

Along the way clouds are gradually appearing on the horizon, but nothing of much concern until a thick anvil-shaped cumulonimbus cloud forms, moving towards us, preceded by an arcus "roll" cloud. This fast arriving complex calls for immediate removing the spinnaker and boom, cleaning the deck, jumping into sailing pants and jacket, just in time for the blow. Less than ten minutes between the warning signal of the cloud in the distance to the blow.

Then, in a minute, the wind turns 180°, from back to front, rain pours heavily, and wind goes from 5 m/s to 18 m/s. Just imagine what could happen if the spinnaker would still be there... The blow of the wind on the genoa sheet starts unfurling it, requiring a strong counterfurling. The visibility decreases close to nothing, and the sea becomes "impossible" with two trains of swell in opposite direction colliding just below our hull.

Squall over Belisama, colliding swell under her...

The whole thing lasts 15 minutes, with the winds getting down to 7 m/s while the rain continues to pour heavily for a good hour. I found a good representation of the phenomenon on a pdf of the environmental and meteorology agency of Canada. Imagine coming from the right, with back wind under spinnaker... The squall line is where the winds change direction by 180° and increases speed up to 18 m/s.

The only good news is that roll clouds closely ahead of a cumulonimbus is quite easy to spot, forming a long dark tube-shaped band. Such spotting calls for immediate action!

The rest of the night is much quieter, with low winds pushing us through the very busy waters of the north sea off the coasts of the Netherlands and Belgium. Here you can encounter oil and gas rigs, large wind farms, a lot of cargo ships manoeuvring in their corridors, and many smaller fishing ships trawling around, not always with their AIS on.

Gas platform with his torch

Same gas platform, later, viewed from a different angle

Then, when entering the corridor to Amsterdam, we chose to go through the cargo ship parking lot to avoid a several mile detour. Most impressive, but is it allowed to go across? Of notice, all ships are aligned with the current (1.5 knots from north) rather than with the wind.

Below is further south, going along the parking lot at the entrance of the Rotterdam corridor. Note that the current has inverted as we progressed along the coast.

Sunrise, à la Monet

At times, we come across incredibly huge ships! MSC Katrina is container carrier of 366 metres long, 48 wide! Hard to realise such a size. Should you put it up in the centre of paris, it would overlook the Eiffel tower by 66 metres, a good 15 floor building! This size is the "New panamax" standard, meaning the largest dimension a ship can have to fit in the locks of the Panama Canal. We are far from the Göta kanal and its 30 metres by 8!

MSC Katrina

After 36 jours non-stop, we finally make it to Dunkirk, welcomed by the Saint Pol lighthouse marking the starboard entrance of the outer east harbour. We noted already the interesting architecture of this lighthouse when passing by with Belisama five years ago on our way to Stockholm. It was constructed in 1937/38 and activated in 1939. At the time, the bottom part was covered by white ceramic tiles (same as in the Paris metro). The lighthouse is currently very deteriorated and cannot be visited.