In previous years I had cruised from Cherbourg SW to the Channel Islands and N to Brittany, and from Calais NE along the French, Belgian and Dutch coasts and into Holland. This year I thought it would be interesting to try and close the gap and cruise between Cherbourg and Calais.

So that the younger members of the party could have more independence, we decided to cruise with two dinghies this year. I was, as usual, taking my Drascombe Lugger, and my younger son David took our Dolphin, which is an old Poole class, clinker-built about 30 years ago and approximately 16’ long. The crews were, at various times, my nephew David, my nephew James, and a girl friend of my son David.

There was the normal last minute hassle trying to get the boats all ready, but the weather was kind to us and we finally set off one morning in mid-July in absolutely calm conditions. We went through the entrance to Poole Harbour at about 9am, set the self-steering, and quietly motored on. After about two hours we had to reduce speed because we found our petrol consumption was too high, but otherwise there was no excitement until about 7.30 that night when we suddenly saw a wall of fog bearing down on us very fast. Fortunately the two boats were fairly close together at this stage, as otherwise we could well have had difficulty keeping in touch. Surprisingly enough there was wind with the fog, and we were able to start sailing for the first time. In fact, on the Dolphin, David was able to turn off the engine completely. The fog was very thick and visibility at times cannot have been more than about 20 yards, but we quietly plugged through this till about 11.30 pm. We were then getting very worried about the amount of petrol we might need to find our way into Cherbourg, so to economise we rafted the two boats together and had just one engine going.

At about 1 am we suddenly saw lights on the shore — not lighthouses. We had not and did not see any lighthouses at all on this trip. Having seen no lighthouse lights, we had no real idea where we were, though we had navigated fairly carefully in order to end a little way up-tide off Cherbourg. We were still surrounded by mist, then suddenly through a gap in the mist we found we were very close to the shore: we could see the cars driving along the coastal road. We decided to back our navigation and turned left, and at about 2 am saw the lights on the west entrance of Cherbourg harbour. We had made our landfall at exactly the right place, and the credit for this is very much due to nephew David who had done all the navigation; it was a brilliant piece of work. So we quietly motored through the outer harbour of Cherbourg and into the marina, finally getting into bed just as the sun was rising.

After a day’s rest we set out to start going round the Normandy coastline. The NE corner on the Cherbourg peninsula is famous for its strong tides, and we certainly met those —fortunately on a calm day.

A list of ports into which we called would be monotonous, so I will just deal with some general points. Most of the harbours on this stretch of the French coast are drying, and therefore one has to go through a lock into a yacht basin. These are only open for short periods either side of HW, and one therefore has to time one’s exits and entries fairly closely. In general terms this meant that the trip from port to port either has to be less than 3 hours (approximately) or more than 9 hours, which is not always particularly easy to achieve. However, the tides run fairly strongly along this part of the coast and by taking advantage of them one can cover quite a distance in 3 hours.

We had three interesting episodes during the next part of the voyage, the first when going from Grandcamp-Maisy to Ouistreham, when we were again hit by fog. At one moment when I thought we were two miles out at sea, we suddenly found the coastline about 100’ off. I still cannot be sure what went wrong with my navigation on this occasion, but the situation was certainly rather alarming. From then on we followed the coast until we got into Ouistreham. It is remarkably difficult to spot the entrances to the French harbours along this part of the coast as the coastline is featureless. In this particular case, we did not see the entrance until we were about 20 yards from it, and we met other boats in the fog who were clearly also searching for it and who came in some little time after us.

The second occasion was when we were going from Ouistreham to Honfleur, where we were following an updated Imray chart (C32) which showed a clear passage fairly close in shore all the way round, which proved to be incorrect. There was no such passage and we had to turn round and go approximately 2 miles out to sea to get in the main channel on the River Seine where, incidentally, the tidal rate was about 6k, which is fairly frightening. (Imray have since corrected this particular chart.)

The other occasion was when we left Fécamp to go to St Valery-en-Caux. The first buoy we were seeking, which was shown on the Imray Chart C31 as being red and yellow, never appeared, though we saw a yellow and black buoy. We then saw what appeared to be a tiny harbour entrance which we thought was probably too small for what we were looking for. I cross-checked with my watch; the distance between Fécamp and St Valery-en-Caux was about 15 miles and we had only taken 1½ hours to get there. Even allowing for a tide under us this was far too high an average speed. We therefore decided this could not be the port and pressed on. In due course, getting slightly worried, we found ourselves off a major headland which we identified as being just short of Dieppe, which made it clear we had missed St Valery-en-Caux. However, we were now too late to go back, so we pressed on into Dieppe. What the problem turned out to be was that my watch battery was running low and my watch had lost an hour between setting off from Fécamp and the time we reached St Valery, so a trip I thought had only taken 1½ hours had in fact taken 2½ hours. This problem would have been avoided if I had cross-checked the time with my crew.

From Dieppe we went on to Le Tréport, where the cruise finished. The closest safe port beyond is Boulogne and that was 40 miles away with no shelter in between, and we were not prepared to do this unless we had fair conditions as we were now down to three people for two boats, one of whom was completely inexperienced. Regretfully, not getting the fair weather, we had to come back to England, collect cars and trailers and trail the boats back from Le Tréport.

All in all an interesting and satisfactory trip with, on the whole, very good weather. The facilities in the ports were good, with the exception of Honfleur and Le Tréport. From the scenic point of view, Honfleur was most attractive. The food everywhere was good. While at Ouistreham we were able to make a day trip up the canal to Caen, do some sightseeing, and also visit the museum at the Pegasus Bridge of Normandy invasion fame.