Yesterday Kamala sailed to Les Minquiers, a reef 11 miles south of Jersey. Perfect day, perfect weather, perfect company.
Wind F2-3, SE, sea slight, weather fair and sunny.
HT 1429 BST, 7.9m
Miles: 32
Motor runtime: 6 hrs, 4-5 litres fuel.
My friend Pete and his future brother-in-law Simon came along as crew.
The video on youtube tells most of the story
Sailing to the Les Minquiers - a youtube link.
To summarise, we left La colletewe motored out for an hour, then put the sails up, heading south. We fished and caught five mackerel, while Pete went below for a lie down with the
mal de mer.
Pete recovered in time to spot the dolphins that swam around the boat for a few minutes. A first for Kamala and myself.
We motored through the passage in and then just short of mooring area at Maîtresse Île the engine broke; still running but the propeller wasn't turning. Luckily, Kamala is only 19ft and can easily be paddled so, using the dinghy oars, we glided up to the one vacant states mooring bouy to take stock of the situation.
A few minutes of pondering revealed the shear pin had gone on the outboard for no apparent reason. It was quickly fixed and then we ate lunch and swam and rowed the dinghy accross to the island. We had a little time to explore before the tide called, and visited the famous toilet.
The return journey was straight forward, but with little wind we motored all the way. Plenty of ferry traffic to avoid and lobster pots. We caught just one more mackerel. Approaching St. Helier we noticed what looked to all of us like the pall of smoke from an orange distress flare, over the horizon to the south. We called the coastguard to have it checked out but they drew a blank.
We arrived back at La Collette as expected around 1800BST
Below is a pic of Kamala at the 'Minkies'. She's the little boat on the right.
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