March cruise to Alderney

An early season shake down cruise to Alderney in lovely weather.


Sancerre in the centre, the only visitor. Nice and quite and no mooring fee
 but on the down side the landing pontoon was yet to be put in the
water and the showers etc. were shut

The island has been very heavily fortified twice. Once, despite the "Entente Cordiale", in the 1840s, in response to French fortification of its norther ports. The second time by Hitler. on this trip I explored the north shore moving west.



Fort Groznez, on the wester edge of the harbour.

Rogue Tourgis

Fort Clonque at the NW corner of the Island.



Clonque on the left, The Qasquets on the horizon centre and Ortc with its
gannet colony on the right.

Seagulls eying my lunch on a warm sunny day by the harbour.

Homeward bound.

Slide show:



Iridium Go Satellite coms installed

Iridium Go Satellite coms installed and its getting a bit crowded on the chart table, even without the lap top.

Rain and Spray protection.

Hopefully this will keep at least some of the rain that gets past the hood out of the boat and off of the chart table. The curtain can be either side or both as shown. The overlapping acrylic strips are hung individually so in most conditions only 2 or 3 need to be in place.

The lot can be put up or taken down in 2 - 3 minutes. The galley is on the wet side for easy access, there is also a seat that fits in the hatch way so I can sit in comfort under the spray hood to see what is going on.

Originally posted on the Achilles flickr site.

Gantry, additional Solar panel and Wind generator.

With the wind generator and a total of 145 Watts of solar (115W rotatable fore and aft to about 70 degrees) I will hopefully not need to run the engine or go into a marina to recharge the domestic batteries.

Originally posted on the Achilles flickr site.

The revamped forepeak

Trial fit of Sancerre’s reworked forepeak. 

Removing the bunk cushions (5” thick and always damp in season from wet sails being stored on them) gives a significant increase in storage capacity up front, the large spinnaker now being able to fit under the chain locker, the wide angle lense makes it look deeper but shorter than it is.

It also gives access to the three lockers without having to remove one or both cushions  which was not really practical at sea.

The cushions can be replaced but there would be a lot of bolts to remove!

The end result except for a few more tie downs added later.

Spinnaker, cruising chute, storm jin and the 2.7m dinghy and more in
the revised forepeak, there would normally also be an electric cool
box in the space on the right. These days I usually store the dinghy
on the cabin roof for easier access, although it will go through the
hatch it is hard work.

The Sancerre Blog

I started the blog as a place holder for tracking and communications, but now post about my trips instead of writing them up in the log. 



Sancerre - Achilles 9 metre No 21 (1976/7)
at the Start of the Jester Baltimore Challenge
(Single handed from Plymouth to Ireland) 2019.
Not a race but 1st in from Plymouth.

There are also pieces written in response to questions on the Flickr site and for the Achilles Owners web site I now administer.