Wind and Tide

There are two types of boaters: those that have run aground, and those who will run aground.

- Anonymous

Alderney is one of the Channel Islands - the last relic of Henry the Second's Angevin Empire, when England and most of France were united under a single crown. It's separated from the Cherbourg Peninsula by a seven mile stretch of water known as the Alderney Race, which is a very odd name indeed. It comes from the age when ships sailed with sails, when a safe landfall depended on how skillfully you captured the wind with canvas, and especially how you used the tide to your advantage.

The Cherbourg peninsula cuts roughly half way through the English Channel, blocking the tidal flow. This gives monsterous tides at Mont St. Michel, the picturesque jewel in the crown of the french tourism industry. But the tide is the tide, and water seeks its own level, so the monster high tide at Mont St. Michel has to flow somewhere, and that somewhere is north. Since that's where the Channel Islands are, the tide is squeezed into the Aldernay Race, where it can flow as fast as ten knots.

I came through the Alderney race last week on the flood at springs - an interesting experience! We were coming from Dielette heading for the UK, motoring at around 5 kts against a modest 10kt northerly breeze. Coming abreast of Cap de Hague, our 5 kts through the water became a steady 13kts otg, and the wind was therefore in the low twenties on the nose. The excitement was in the seas which were around 2 1/2 metres peak to trough, very short (around a boat length between peaks) and confused - coming from all directions. The ride was real fairground stuff with the boat being pointed skywards and then dropped nose first into the bottom of the next wave - sometimes straight, sometimes rolling corkscrew fashion. The ride lasted for about half an hour before we got back to normality.

That's pretty impressive today, when ships have engines. The first time I took the boat through Wood's Hole, I was glad not only for lookouts, but for lookouts that had made the voyage before. Wood's Hole also has tricky tides, but they only run 5 knots or so, and my boat can make thirty, so there was power to spare.

Not so for Admiral Sir John Balchin and his 1100 men. All they had was canvas, and rope, and muscle to work the lines, and it wasn't enough. A gale combined with the tides to push their ship onto the rocks. As Nigel Calder, in his great book The English Channel, says:

The object gleaming white in the hazy shunshine, away to the north, is not a ship, but the Casquets rocks, as in caskets or coffins. They rank high among the English Channel's assassins.

The wreck of the H.M.S. Victory has been found - no, not the flagship of Admiral Horatio "Kiss me, Hardy" Nelson, which is in permanent drydock in Portsmouth, England. This version pre-dated Nelson by sixty years, and met her fate in 1744.

The sea casts a spell on you. The true seasickness isn't the green-behind-the-gills sort, but is a longing for new horizons, new ports, new people. But that wine-dark sea, or peaceful bay hides a terrible power, that will claim fools even with engines and GPS and Chartplotters.

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end. Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.

Psalms, 107:23-30, KJV