So, let it just be said that we seem to be the unluckiest pair going!! We left from Brighton, James in tow, at 2.00am on Tuesday 24th September. Shortly after leaving the marina we almost collided with a lobster pot!! (the joys of night sailing!) We had been sailing for about 5 hours and Brighton was still shining in the distance behind us when we started to encounter other boats.... some very large boats... We were beginning to get a bit arsey at these ships, we weren't meant to be getting to those till later on - when the sun had come up! After narrowly missing an oil tanker we realised that, contrary to what Navionics said, we had reached the shipping lanes! Thankfully, the sun started to creep up from behind the horizon and we were on our way! We started to relax a little, enjoying the fact that we seemed to be making good time, and that's where our problems started...
Our trusty engine (who we had just shown copious amounts of love and attention) decided to stop working. 8.00am and we were sitting ducks in the shipping lane with no wind. After discovering that we had a little signal left on the phone we made a quick call to home for some advice. No-one wanted to turn back but we starting to wonder if we would actually make it there! After a rally from Mike's mum we carried on a 3 knots on to the french side of the shipping channel. We got the engine back up and running and took on the next challenge. Not so many ships to contend with on this stretch (busiest shipping lane in the world my arse!) After we had cleared the shipping lane we decided to give the engine a rest and, very slowly, made our way onwards. It was such a lovely feeling to be looking around and all we could see was sea – and bloody seagulls!
After a few hours we had made little headway and were beginning to get a little frustrated. We switched the engine back on, but with 20 odd miles still to go the light was beginning to fade, fast. The sun finally disappeared and it was pitch black. By now we were all pretty tired and cold and there was still no land in sight... We kept going and got to about 10 miles offshore when we realised that we weren't going to make it to the marina. Lots of commercial vessels around that had so many lights on we couldn't tell which way they were going, and plenty of buoys marking dangerous wrecks that we needed to avoid. We came to the decision that maybe a night a sea was the best option and we would try for the marina in the morning. A now fairly drunken James was sent to bed whilst Mike and I stayed up for the first watch. Heading back out to sea, drinking strong coffee and making good progress we were feeling tired but good.... then the engine belt broke broke and smoke was coming from inside and out of the exhaust. The engine had clearly overheated. So we fitted new belt and tried desperately to get the engine going. The engine was having none of it and neither was the wind.
If only it had gone a couple of hours later we would have been fine, but no, she decided to stop right as we were coming up to some flashing buoys that weren't marked on our chart but we knew were dangerous.... and just to top it all off, the wind that had been predicted was nowhere to be seen. We were in slack tide east of the bouys and the waiting for the tide to come back start dragging us straight towards this dangerous area. The decision was made to call for help. An hour or so later and our rescuers arrived!! 'Les Sauventeurs en Mer' were a group of lovely French guys that very quickly got us out of danger and on to Fécamp. Poor Hyjanorra has never gone that quickly in her life – we must have been going at 8.5 knots!! The bottom of boat is super clean now – so our tow may have cost us a fortune but we saved money on a clean! We finally arrived into Fécamp at about 4.00am... our easy 16 hour sail turned into an epic 26 hour adventure!
Almost two weeks later and we are still here....! Fécamp is beautiful, but I feel like we have explored every inch of it. The people are so lovely though, and even though we have very little French and them very little English, we have met some great people and had a good laugh. The best person has got to be Gautier, the engineer who has fixed our engine. Turns out the water cooling system wasn't working properly due to a broken thermostat, and following the broken belt and overheating our exhaust elbow blew out too. We got all this fixed for free thanks to a trade of some of Mike's surplus rigging gear! We have also invested in an outboard which should be ariving tomorrow, fingers crossed, and we should be on our way to Honfleur on Tuesday – weather permitting. After beautiful sunshine it took a turn for the worst yesterday, soaking our cushions that we had left outside to air!!
Anyway, all in all we had had a fab time so far and are looking forward to carrying on our adventure, and finally making it into the French canals.
Bye for now :)