The Bosun is a 14ft. fibreglass dinghy, the winner of a naval competition for a fast, tough, minimum maintenance boat suitable for open sea sailing by 2 - 4 men. Particularly attractive features of the design are bulb section bilge keels which are used as handholds when righting a capsize and polyurethane foam under the rolled side decks and in the forward 18" of the hull. This makes the boat unsinkable after even a major collision and should reduce the chance of being holed by a floating baulk of timber at night. A 'test report' on the Bosun should be appearing in the next Bulletin. ( HYPERLINK "026-02.doc" 026-02)

When loading for our proposed Chichester - Cherbourg trip my crew, David Kirkpatrick, and I met the usual trouble with dinghy cruising that the amount of gear needed depends much more on the number of crew and the length of voyage than on the size of boat. Thus an enormous pile of stuff had to be stowed. The locker space under the foredeck took most of it, but John Deacon's plastic dustbin with clamp on lid had to be pressed into service and lashed behind the aft thwart. We cleared with the Itchenor Customs officer by 'phone and left Bosham in a flat calm at 1600 on 31st. May 1964 about half an hour after H.W. Portsmouth. Light to moderate forecast, although an hour before we left Thorney Island had 30 knots SW in a thunderstorm! By 17:30 we'd reached Chichester entrance and the wind had increased to NE 3-4. The 17:58 shipping forecast gave E to NE 3-4 occasionally 5. All we wanted, and one was uncomfortably aware that once past the Nab it would be easier to go on than to turn back, come what might, 65 miles, but we were both fairly experienced, very well equipped, in an excellent boat, and with the usual overconfidence of the young - as they say - the hardest decision to make is to give up.

At 1900 the Nab was abeam with the wind NE 4-5. The course to Cherbourg would have been a dead run, so we stayed 30º off it and had an hour's magnificent planing. Broad reach, full sail, the bow wave piled up each side and the boat flying over the sea. At 20:00 we wanted to change to the other gybe to return to track. The dinghy shipped some water while going about, being rather over-canvassed in the rising sea. This made her reluctant to get back on the plane, and we decided that it was more sensible to get the mainsail down and drift quietly along under the jib. This was satisfactory except that we were both sick when not steering. Before dark everything was secured, life lines fastened, waterproof torches slung round our necks (handy in any case and perhaps vital in a capsize or man overboard), electric lamp and white flares handy for steamer scaring, and a boat roller inflated for use as a cushion by the off watch crew. A very dark night, no shore lights or stars, wind NE 4-5, steamer lanes crossed at about 23:00 and 03:30 with no panics.

We had seen lightening flashing ahead before dawn, and at first light (very welcome!) we found ourselves sailing under a very nasty looking thunderstorm. The wind fell lighter, but as the storm looked quite capable of producing violent squalls from unexpected directions I decided to get all sail down. When the jib was halfway down it jammed solid - wouldn’t go up or down. Luckily David was able to wind it round the mast to give us time for thought. Since the trouble was obviously at the jib halliard block, and as we were feeling rather conspicuous sitting under a thundercloud with a 20ft. aluminium mast pointing at it and lightening all round, the best bet seemed to be to get the mast down. Being stepped in a single tabernacle this was not too difficult, although there was a nasty moment when the mast stuck halfway down and further encouragement dropped it with a rending noise. We were expecting to find it two feet short, but in fact the only damage was a shock cord retainer we had forgotten to remove. The jib halliard wire had slipped off its sheave onto the pin and was easily replaced. After a pause while we sat and cowered in the heaviest rain I've ever seen the storm passed and we were able to raise the mast and jib and continue. We were pleased with ourselves over the success of these manoeuvres, although having seen some routine spinaker handling in an eight tonner since, with a boom twice as heavy as the Bosun mast I feel the self-congratulation may have been unjustified. Still, the motion in the swell was most unpleasant and we were having to pause at intervals to try to be sick over the side.

After this circus we felt we should be almost there (and how one wanted to be!), but the latest steamer sightings gave us about 20 miles go. We turned south of course to offset the tide and to make sure of meeting the coast upwind of Cherbourg. The wind returned to 4-5 NE, and the sea soon became rather alarming, about 5-6ft. high with heavily breaking crests. This was unexpected as the wind was not against the tide, and we were too far offshore for it to be due to shoaling. We had no sea anchor or drogue perhaps an unwise omission, and although a bucket could have been used we did not try this, feeling that with us tiring, perhaps 15 miles to go, and no reason to expect an improvement in the weather, the loss of speed would not have been justified. Thus we kept her as straight as possible to prevent being rolled over, and continued. We were pooped by three or four breaking crests, each leaving about six inches of water in the boat, but these were luckily well separated and we had plenty of time to bale out between them. It was comforting to be in an unsinkable boat, but if we'd been completely swamped the combination of much reduced stability and speed together with the cold and wet would not have been too healthy. Another worry was no sign of the coast, in spite of good visibility where we were and the moderate on-shore wind. A radio fix was not felt to be worth the risk of soaking the Pilot Pal (??) and would have been difficult in that sea anyway but thoughts of large compass errors started to arise (“what's stored in that dustbin beside the steering compass? The spare compass?? Le Havre or the Casquets???”).

In fact we'd checked the compass out to the Nab and when the stars appeared briefly during the night, but it's difficult to repress illogical worries when one's tired and sick. The wind and sea decreased and after a steamer sighted crossing ahead - reassuring as the visibility seemed to be only a mile or two in mist - we were very glad to see a beacon at about 11:30. We raised the full mainsail, but with little wind and a strong east going tide couldn't reach it until noon, when land appeared in the mist behind it. The beacon was identified as being off Cape Levi, about five miles east of Cherbourg, so we turned west. The sun came out clearing the mist, the wind rose to about 3 NE, the coast looked green and inviting, and we were able to take off our oilskins and dry out. With a mug of water and an orange apiece life seemed just about perfect, and a pleasant sail into the Yacht Harbour at Cherbourg completed the trip most satisfactorily. We stepped ashore at 16:00, 24 hours from getting aboard at Bosham.

Two delightful days in Cherbourg followed, the highlights being perhaps the first drink on the balcony of the Yacht Club, the first meal in a Routiers cafe, and the hospitality of a local newpaper photographer who gave us dinner and the use of his spare room when the municipal campsite drainage proved unequal to Tuesday's rainfall.

We left after lunch on Wednesday for a much more peaceful crossing, force 3 SE, sun then stars and phosphorescence. Rather spoilt by the wind rising to 4 - 5 as we approached the Nab and then falling to 0-1 in a heavy rainstorm, these conditions lasting until we'd cleared Customs at Itchenor and returned to Bosham about 12:30.

Lessons? It's obviously not wise to undertake such a trip without a boat which is up to the job and an experienced crew - the physical danger would probably still be less than a weekend's motoring, but it would be no fun being continually afraid that something will blow up or break which you won't be able to deal with. The most worrying discovery was that a wind of less than force 5 could produce a breaking sea in the open Channel which would seriously flood a very able dinghy. Presumably this was partly due to some tidal effect, but it's converted me to a self-draining Shearwater cat for next year.

Final impressions. 1. Unbounded admiration for Frank Dye and his crews. 2. Very pleasant memories of France and a wish to go there again in a small boat. 3. Not such happy memories of looking up helplessly at great grey waves astern curling over to break.