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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!