crossing the channel twice, July – August 2020; Amanzi, Oyster 56
Getting Amanzi ready for the circumnavigation; new standing rigging; running out of fuel; Covid-19 change in plans: circumnavigation… not this year
July 17th 2020 | Scheveningen
I’m sailing with Marc and Clare to Lymington, UK, to renew the standing rigging as to prepare Amanzi for the circumnavigation. Afterwards we’ll sail south eventually ending up in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria to join the ARC in November to cross the Atlantic. Next year, we then will join the World ARC and start the circumnavigation.
Friday, July 17th 2020, I dropped off Marc and Clare in IJmuiden. They were leaving IJmuiden forever… finally.
Next morning I joined them in Scheveningen where we left around 11:15 hr. The weather was fair, winds 15 kts. but on the nose, so we motor sailed for a bit. Marc and I stayed on deck till we crossed the TSS. At 05:00 hr. Clare and Aimee, our niece who joined us for the trip to Lymington, took over.
The crossing was a bit boring… we had to motor sail for most of the time, the wind dropped to less than 5kts from time to time and we had a lot of rain. Anyway you can’t have it all…
No fuel
Monday 18:45 hr. Suddenly the engine stopped… what the hell! It didn’t take long to find out what the cause was…. no fuel :-/ Marc remembered that he’d thought of checking the fuel but had never came to actually do it.
Luckily we were very close to Newhaven and the wind had dropped to 4 kts. We anchored under sail and launched the dinghy. Clare and I took the dinghy and went into the marina to find it closed…
A very friendly fisherman helped us out calling the guy that runs the fuel dock. He was having his dinner but in 15 minutes he was willing to help us out.
The dock where he told us to go turned out to be meant for coasters…. His pump was meant to fuel up fishing vessels, taking about a 100 times more that would fit in our 2 jerrycans. The nozzle didn’t quite fit either… Anyway we managed to fill our jerrycans, but then it turned out that he couldn’t take cash or a card for payment. No problem though, he gave us his email address and was okay with us promising to sort it out later. To his standard we had just a few drops of diesel.
We got back to the boat and ‘filled’ the tank. Then we had to decide, either stay the night at anchor and fill up properly next day or sail on with not too much wind. We couldn’t keep on motoring since we hadn’t enough fuel to make it all the way to Lymington and we wanted to have enough left to motor into a marina.
We decided to sail on. Luckily the wind picked up a bit and we had a nice sail to Lymington where we arrived Monday morning at 07:45 hr.
The plan is to stay for a week or so to get the new standing rigging and some more items done. Aimee had to fly home again and Clare went to visit her parents while Marc and I stayed on the boat while the refit of the rigging is carried out.
Refit
The refit took ‘a bit’ longer… Then again, it turned out that one the compressor of the freezer wasn’t just not functioning too well… it had died completely. Also the boiler was leaking and had to be replaced. The servicing of the engine and the generator was already in the plan as the new antifouling.
Marc also decided to get a sat phone and installed a new WiFi system (redbox).
Change in plans
In the meantime also the plans had changed. It was inevitable that the Covid situation would affect the scheduling of the ARC and it did. It was still on but with a number of restrictions, so Marc and Clare decided to postpone their entry to next year and sail over to Brest for now.
Marc and Clare would then spend their holidays with the kids sailing down the French coast to La Rochelle There Rutger and I would rejoin Marc to sail down to Porto, where Rutger would disembark, and then on to Lagos, where Marc and Clare planned to leave the boat for the winter.
Before leaving the UK we had a stopover in Portland to fuel up. Diesel prices vary a lot among the marina’s! Next morning, August 1st at around 08:00 hr. we left Portland.
Brest
We had a very nice sail to Brest!! No motoring this time. We only ran the generator from time to time to charge up the batteries. Average windspeed was around 12 to 15 kts and mostly sunny. Marc and I shared watches during the night and next day around 20:00 hrs., we arrived at Brest.
