Crossing the shelf

The huge high-pressure system that had been sitting over the UK since March might have been bad news for our farmers, who were now suffering one of the worse spring droughts on record. But for sailors heading southwest this was great news.  High pressure means easterly winds in the English Channel, the perfect wind for sailing over   to France and beyond – as opposed to the supposedly prevailing foul south westerlies.

So from Newton Ferrers we had a fabulous fast fair wind over-night sail to the port of Brest on the NW tip of the Brittany peninsular. However no sooner than we had arrived, the long-range weather forecast was predicting that the much overdue anticipated change in the weather, with the first Atlantic low-pressure system in three months, was now heading our way. With only a short fair wind weather window left to cross the Bay of Biscay, we urgently summoned our crew for the next leg, my nephew Angus. Thankfully he picked up our message whilst hiking and wild camping in the Pennines and on 20th May he joined ship enabling us to head back out to sea the following day with the last of our good friend the North Easterly wind pushing us on.

The first 24 hours of this three-day passage was rough and quite uncomfortable as we crossed over the continental shelf. Here, about 40 miles off the French coast the ocean plummets from its coastal depth of around 100 metres to over 4000 metres. This staggering oceanic cliff face creates a huge upwelling of the prevailing east-going Atlantic current and for several hours Saecwen was thrown around by some pretty rough and irregular seas.  The strong NE’ly wind, which had by now necessitated two reefs in our mainsail, was also blowing in the opposite direction to a 1.5 knot current, adding to the turbulence with a classic wind-against-tide situation.

However, once we were clear, the ocean settled into a much more regular pattern, with a huge, long swell rolling in from the Atlantic. Crossing the Shelf has always been for me a real psychological moment of any sailing adventure. We were finally in the deep blue ocean, away from the hazards of land and its tidal currents and coastal shipping.

After having to motor for several hours to cross a big wind hole of calm water at the end of the second day, we found the wind again about fifty miles off the Spanish coast. At midday on the third day the clanging of Saecwen’s ships bell marked landfall as the magnificent mountains of Spain’s Galician coast became visible at 30 miles distance. With boat now charging along under full sail at over six knots, our Biscay crossing ended with a wonderful broad reach down the coast before securing in the centre of the historic Galician city of A Coruña just after one in the morning of May 24th.

It had been a fine sail. We had been joined by pods of dolphins every day, who to our delight jumped around the boat, and winked as us as they played across the bow. At night the clear skies were filled with dazzling stars and the last sliver of a blood red moon. Heloise even had the good luck of seeing two shooting stars on one of her night watches.  Most importantly we had “Crossed the Shelf,” and Saecwen’s blue water wanderings could finally begin.