Calstar: under the bridge(s)

It was a fun, busy weekend. Finished work on Friday and set off down to Bristol for a gig at The Railway Tavern. It was packed and very lively. Finished at midnight, home at little before 0200, but it was probably 0330 before I got to bed. These things always leave me buzzing. Got up in time to make it to karate Saturday morning, and from there went straight to the next venue to set up for the evening’s gig.

My cousin’s son James was getting married and had both invited the band to play at his reception and Nikki and I to the wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony, although the church was a bit on the chilly side because their heating had broken down, and a great party afterwards.

I’d originally planned to race the Albacore with Amanda at the lake on Sunday, but something came up last minute on Saturday so she made her apologies. I thought briefly about racing the Laser, but sat with Dad at the table during the wedding reception, it suddenly occurred to me that with light winds forecast and what must be a neap tide as it had been a half moon Friday night, a trip out and back on Sunday with Calstar might be a very good idea. Needless to say, Dad was keen.

Meanwhile, I’d posted a picture of my brother setting up the band’s PA with me earlier in the day to Instagram with the caption “All you need is love. And a band” to which our friend Mick (who sailed with Dad and me in the Holms Race last September) had commented that he couldn’t have agreed more, but “would like to add sailing” if I wouldn’t mind. Obviously, I wouldn’t, and replying that night sometime in the early hours, mentioned Dad and I were sailing in the morning and that Mick would be welcome to join us if he found himself free.

Sunday’s forecast was dry with a low of 7°C and a high of 11°C, 4 knots in the south, building to 10 later in the day and backing to the south-east with gusts up to 15. Avonmouth tides was HW 1347 at 8.8m and LW 2011 at 4.5m. A range of only 4.3m, very slight for our neck of the woods. We booked our lock out for 1200. The last lock back in for that tide was 1800.

We got to the boat for just before 1100 on Sunday morning, Mick joining us not much after. We haven’t had her out since last October, but Dad’s been down a lot since we put her back in the water in February and it didn’t take very long to prep her ready to go. It’s a well-rehearsed routine these days: plug in the autohelm and the VHF command mic in the cockpit, take the winch covers off, fit the tiller extension, plug in the Garmin chart plotter and mount my Sony tablet. Lower the spray hood, the undo the tether I tie around the headsail when we leave her, unzip the mainsail’s stack-pack and attach the halyard. Disconnect and stow the cable for the shore power (using the tether from the headsail to keep it tidy in the rope locker), turn the engine electrics on and open the seacock, put the key in the ignition, shorten up the lines ready to cast off.

At 1145, seeing green lights outside the gate, we cast off and made our way down to the lock.

Another yacht was already in there and a second followed us in. The gates closed behind and the lock lowered us down to the level of the flooding tide. At 1204 the gates cracked open and under a surprisingly warm sun and hazy sky, the lock disgorged the three of us out into the waiting Bristol Channel.

We found the water outside pretty flat and slightly wind-ruffled. At 1215, clear of the shore and Portishead falling away astern, we turned Calstar head to wind, Mick hauled up the mainsail and Dad cut the engine. Turning back away from the wind onto a broad starboard reach, we unfurled the headsail and set a course for the first of the Severn bridges, Dad keeping the helm. Despite the light wind running with the tide, the log showed Calstar making 4.0 knots through the water and 5.4 knots over the ground.

By 1300, with 5nm behind us, we were in the Lower Shoots. Our speed through the water had dropped off a bit to 2.5 knots, but the tide was still giving us 3.9 over the ground. Dad was still on the helm. The blue of the sky was slowly fading to a high level grey, and was now peppered with cumulus, the influence of the thermals lifting under each of them making the light southerly wind very shifty and variable in direction. Dad kept the helm as the span of the Second Severn Crossing loomed, feigning alarm at my refusal to start the engine “just in case” as the bridge began its final rush towards us. 

We passed beneath at 1324, still on a broad reach to starboard with Dad on the helm, but I took over when we bore away shortly after onto the short dogleg towards Charston Rock that would let us avoid the beacon on Old Man’s Head and the rocks beneath. We goose-winged the main and genoa onto a dead run. Probably unnecessary as we were on the flood tide and have a draft of just under a meter. But it was only a small tide, the rocks of Old Man’s Head rise up to 6.4m in places, and nobody else was using the main channel that afternoon.

The wind over the water between the two bridges became very light and temperamental. Past the beacon, we hardened up from the dead run, bringing the headsail back across to re-join the main on a broad starboard reach, and I engaged the autohelm. We slid past the forest of masts marking the moorings at St Pierre Pill on the western shore beyond the submerged bank of Charston Sands, and on towards the gracefully inverted arches of the old Severn Bridge. The mouth of the River Wye passed to port beneath a bridge of its own, then the small island of Chapel Rock with it’s lonely old ruin. At 1412, the tide now slowing considerably but not yet foul, we passed under the bridge.

Once through, we turned up hard into the wind, close hauled on starboard and bearing towards the eastern shore. No longer sailing on a sympathetic reach, the gusts suddenly felt more lively, so we pulled a roll in on the headsail just to stiffen the little yacht up a bit and settled into our long beat back down the way we’d just come up. 

By 1426, Chapel Rock and the Wye were sliding astern of us to starboard. One of the other two yachts that had locked out with us was coming up the other way, with the same idea as us of reaching the old bridge before turning and beating back. By now we'd covered 10.2nm and were close hauled and making 2.5 knots through the water. The 3.9 knots the plotter showed us having over the ground made it pretty clear the tide had turned and was now running fair for home. 

The three of us munched contentedly on some sandwiches Mick had brought along for lunch as the flow of water lifted us along the edge of Mathern Oaze and along Charston Sands. Abeam of St Pierre Pill we tacked towards Dun Sands, crossing the deep water and waiting for it to shallow again before tacking back towards Charston Rock. Another couple of tacks saw us clear the shallows of Lady Bench and pass Old Man's Head, nicely lined up for the centre of the new bridge.

By 1529 we were through, the tide now pushing us along at 4.6 knots as we beat our way back down through the shoots and back towards Portishead over half a dozen tacks or so.

At 1615 we fired up the engine and put the sails away. Closing in on Portishead, I could see from the breakwater we'd overshot a bit, but with the slight neap tide, crabbing back up against it wasn't a problem. At 1640 we called up the lock. We could see they were loading boats in, and they kindly held it for us until we came alongside five minutes later and the dark gates slid shut behind. With three other yachts and a couple of anglers the sluice gates opened and we were lifted back up into the marina.

We finally landed back at our own berth at 1725, having stopped first at the fuel barge to top up our diesel. Calstar had covered 20.8 nautical miles across a passage of 5 hours and 40 minutes. After what feels like a long winter of not going anywhere, it was the perfect little shakedown cruise.

And a good dress rehearsal for next weekend. It's the Easter Bank Holiday, so no work Friday or Monday. With four days free and no gigs booked either, we could go almost anywhere on the Bristol Channel with Calstar. But Dad wants to go to Gloucester. So we'll head back up under the bridges again early Friday morning, but this time carry on up into the estuary, lock in at Sharpness at high water, and motor up the Gloucester Sharpness Canal.

Forty minutes driving down a motorway followed by boat passage of around eight hours that includes some particularly involved pilotage, to end up at a destination that's no more than a fifteen minute drive from my back door.

I've possibly mentioned this before, but were it not for my own obsession with sails, Dad would have a canal boat. And be perfectly happy. I shall then bring a guitar along to amuse myself, and be perfectly happy too.