From Dover to Isle of Wight and back to France

In Dover we stayed in the Tidal Harbour, which was with 30.80 pound the most expensive harbour on our trip so far. Unfortunately we were stuck there for 3 days, due to weak wind and fog. But during our stay we met the crew from sailing boat Milan. The skipper participated in the Tall Ship Race the year before and now also wants to cross the Atlantic. We could have seen them in Aalborg last year when we came back from our first vacation with Mila on the North Sea. We had a little bit too much Jägermeister from Helgoland with them.
We liked the promenade, with its yellow to orange stones on the beach and smooth pavement, perfect for longboarding. We didn’t like that you couldn’t even look down from the hill with the castle without paying the overpriced fee.

After some foggy days in Britain we were happy to get wind force 3 from South West on Tuesday, planning to sail to a wild anchorage in France and hopefully find the summer again.

On Friday midday we had to use the engine as the wind faded. After some hours one of the seals in our motor started leaking, so we searched for a Vetus Service nearby and it turned out one was on the Isle of Wight. Lukas was a little bit happy that he got to see this sailor’s mecca even though we wanted to skip it in order to get to the Bay of Biscay earlier.

We moored at Cowes Yacht Haven. A mechanic came aboard the next day and fixed the problem and also did the next engine service as it was due again.

The people from the marina wanted us to leave as soon as possible because the whole harbour was booked for the participants of a race. So we went to Osborne Bay just West of Cowes to anchor there. We had quite a bit of swell there but we were happy not to spend any money for some time after having to pay for the engine service. Over the phone payment, by the way, if someone from payleven is reading this 🙂 The bay is private property of the Queen, so we were not able to take the dinghy to land. We spend two relaxing days in the bay as the wind was too strong to continue our trip. Lukas tried to catch a fish and failed. I got the guitar out of the rear bunk and practiced a bit.

As soon as the wind decreased a little bit we pulled the anchor and drove to the western end of the Solent and out in the Needles Channel. The sea can be quite rough there when you don’t pass it in high tide, it was not too bad when we went through.

After about 16 hours we arrived at 8 in the morning in a cosy little bay in Saint-Germain-des-Vaux. We slept for some hours and then took the dinghy to shore in order to explore the area. I went running for about 30 km on a beautiful track on the coast. Lukas bought some fish from one of the fishers, I stole some corn from the fields and we had a barbecue on the beach. Yesterday we visited the closest supermarket, which was 8 km away. Luckily the longboard carried the heavy stuff for us again, hill up and hill down and through tiny old villages.