Tribulations on the way to Cherbourg, 19-20 August

The segment Dunkirk to Cherbourg is 180 nautical miles long (334 km) initially along the coast until the Cap Gris-Nez, then along the cargo ship traffic corridor in the Dover Straight, the 30 km large passage between England and France, and finally straight to Cherbourg in a quite deserted area until you reach the "Le Havre" corridor. It should have taken us around 36 hours at an average speed around 6 knots. It took us more than 41...

On the map, you can see numerous marks indicating wrecked ships. At the end of the journey, we understood why...

For the first part, leaving Dunkirk, we had a very nice weather and supportive back reach wind moving us swiftly along the coast. The green of the water contrasting with the deep blue of the sky was striking. Nothing to be seen in the Baltic.

We continue moving along nicely as the clouds start to build above us. The weather forecast calls for gale winds after passing Cap Gris-Nez, and we can see squalls coming as we take all the benefit from the initial back winds. 

Then, we pass rightly called "Cap Gris-Nez"(grey nose Cape) and head towards the open sea, along the Dover Straight corridor. Note the unleashed clouds...

I could not take any picture during the night. However, in short, we were tacking in the narrow space between the coast and the corridor under trinket and two reefs with gale level winds, having to cope with fishing and SAR (search & rescue) ships outside the corridor. This was very demanding and at times frustrating, for example when the "Abeille Languedoc" French rescue tug did not change course by one degree to avoid us, forcing us to change course and move downwind, meaning getting back in time one hour to where we were previously... I assume that they were on an SAR mission even though nothing was going on on VHF channel 16.

Back to the top picture of this post, watching the procession of cargo ships, all bigger than one another. One in particular draw our attention, the "Ever Grade" from the shipping company "Evergreen". You can't make that up! It is the second from the left, the biggest one, and indeed, (one of) the biggest in the world, with 400 metre length by 59 width. More than Panamax. On this one, as was commenting Geneviève on a previous post, you could put one Tour Eiffel, plus two "Arcs de triomphe". Imagine! 

Yet, the evergreen most recent container carrier ship is releasing a yellow smoke very visible and quite of concern... Yellow smoke plus blue sky results in Evergreen, is this the rationale for such an obvious pollution?

Below short movie showing this monster making it to the harbour...

Then came the morning, and the typical rising sun under the layer of clouds that we have been used too in the previous sailing nights. Always very very nice reconnecting with the sun when you have passed a moonless dark night watching for any encounters that could become a threat. A strong sense of relief. But, by the time it rose, we were not even half way, and the currents were watching us coming...! 

A "raz" in French means a straight with severe currents representing a strong danger. With the highest tides in the world, the Cotentin peninsula is surrounded by "raz", the most famous of which are the Raz Blanchard one the Raz de Sein. Raz de Sein is considered so dangerous that there is a French proverb that says "Who sees Sein, sees her end".

Now, for our non-sailors readers, here is a screen capture of the information about our route as we pass the Raz de Barfleur, the one at the east top of the Cotentin. I will look at the column of figures at the centre of the screen and explain.

The red boat is our boat, at the centre of the screen;

• 1.40 is the VMC (Velocity Made Course) meaning how fast we are going in knots in the direction we should be going, which is the dotted red line on the screen. 
• 6.76 is the STW (Speed Through Water) meaning our speed in knots over the water.
• 1.4 is the SOG (Speed Over Groud) meaning the speed at which we are moving over the ground (or over the chart).
• 5.7 is the drift expressed in knots, meaning the speed at which the water is moving over the ground under the effect of the current.
• 266 is the heading (HDG), meaning the direction that the boat is facing and indicated by the blue line.
• 246 (bottom centre) is the Bearing To Waypoint (BTW), meaning the direction to the waypoint we want to go to and indicated by the dashed red line, the direction on the ground that would bring us to Cherbourg, therefore, the direction that we are aiming at.
• 230 is the Course Over Ground, meaning the actual direction that we are moving on the ground and indicated by the pink dashed line. Overall, 36° difference between the direction of the head of the boat and the motion on the chart or ground. You need to get used to this to steer a boat in these waters!
• Finally, with 12.21 miles to go (Distance to Arrival - DTA), it will take us another 8h43' of sailing (Time to Arrival - TTA), meaning 05:32 in the morning (Expected Time of Arrival - ETA) while it is currently 20:49... 

In short, we would like to go towards the red dotted line. To do so, we steer the boat to go in the direction of the blue line, the current pushes us left and in fact, we are moving in the direction of the pink dashed line, 36° degrees apart, and by the way, pretty much towards the rocks. Clear?