Right now a high pressure developed over England and brought easterly winds in the English Channel. Right now, when we wanted to head east towards Le Havre. We had been looking forward for a long time to sail downwind and get familiar with the downwind behaviour of our Bajka. But according to Murphy’s law the wind always comes from where you want to sail to :=). Eric and Andrea always smile.
Initially the wind was still a bit north and we were able to lay Cap de la Hague. Of course, it didn’t look like that for a long time. But the closer we got to the French coast, the more we got pushed to windward by the current, up to 4 knots. Our Bajka even reached 10 knots over ground in 12 knots of wind.
Without a navigation tool one would have probably said that we certainly would need to tack another two times, but the tablet showed clearly that we could pass the lighthouse. Since the current would change its direction by 90 degrees around the lighthouse we didn’t want to take any risks and we did a short beat on the other tack :=).
In the evening we arrived in Cherbourg. A ferry-harbour with an outer harbour and an inner harbour. Here the well known aluminium yachts from Allures and Garcia are built. Next to us there were two such boats under the Swiss flag. Ernst and Margrit showed us their brand new Garcia 45, a dream for blue-water sailors. They told us of their sailing times when the children were small and of their latest project to be found on www.kamastern.ch.
The next day more than 20 knots from east were announced and we decided to stay one day more in Cherbourg. Anyway, we wanted to go shopping and do the customs formalities for the re-entry into the EU. But when we wanted to buy a baguette in the morning we were told: “C’est fermé, c’est le Quinze Août …”. We couldn’t even buy the promised ice-cream for the kids.
After coming back from our unsuccessful shopping-tour 4 customs officers arrived at the pontoon. So we didn’t need to find them in the city, that was easy :-). They were very nice, inspected our Bajka and in the end they gave us the protocol. As of today we are allowed to stay in the EU for the next 18 months.
