Peter Chittenden's Trip to France in a Dolphin

Set out below is an account of an adventure across the English Channel in a Parkstone Yacht Club Dolphin. The Dolphin was manned by Peter Chittenden and Roger Fry and took place in the 1960’s.

To Cherbourg the Hard Way – In a Dolphin

An Adventure in D3 which earned Peter Chittenden a reprimand.

‘An early morning in June during the 60’s, two tired bedraggled figures wade ashore from a Dolphin anchored in front of the Club. Their reply to a query from one of the Club staff is met with complete disbelief, “Cherbourg – pull the other one!”, but it was true, we had.’

I swear that it all began with a serious discussion, over a cup of tea, on the sea-keeping qualities of a Dolphin, Jill maintains it resulted from an over lubricated Club Dinner and a boast to take a Dolphin to France. Whatever the truth a few weeks later Roger Fry (a fellow Dolphin sailor) and I set out one Friday evening in Bluebird (D3) with a 2/3 Easterly breeze, forecast to veer S.W. later.

As the coast disappeared astern I was somewhat surprised to learn that Roger, who had argued so strongly for the sea-keeping qualities, had never before sailed out of sight of land. By breakfast time, after a quiet night, we were in the shipping lane off the French coast and although we could hear the sirens of several ships it was the sighting of one that made us realise that visibility was only about a mile.

Our navigational equipment consisted of an ex-army dry card prismatic compass balanced on a sailbag, a torch and a large scale chart of the Cherbourg peninsular.

During the night we had been broadreaching at a fairly steady speed and by late morning I was looking anxiously for some sign of the coast, suddenly the fog lifted sufficiently for us to see the foreshore and some off lying rocks not much more than a mile away. As I studied the chart a sudden rain squall blotted out the coast and reduced my chart to a soggy mass, luckily I was familiar with this stretch of coast from previous trips and had the time to recognise that we were just outside Omonville.

It seemed pointless to try and beat uptide to Cherbourg so we crept into the small harbour and ran the boat up on the beach. In a café we lunched on bread and pâté with a bottle of wine, the latter may have been a mistake as we both fell asleep on the beach and woke up to find Bluebird about to float off. After an uneventful sail we finally tied up in front of the old Cherbourg Yacht Club and were a little miffed at the lack of interest displayed by the other British yachts at the arrival, under sail, of a 16ft open boat flying the Red Duster and a Q flag, however, I signed the visitors book with some pride.

Our resolution to make an early start on Sunday was undone by an excellent dinner at the Café de Paris and some brandy in the Club bar. Under a clear blue sky in bright sunshine we rowed out to the Grande Rade and it wasn’t until we were a mile or so outside the Western Entrance that we found a light south-westerly and set sail.

By early afternoon the wind had steadily increased to a 5 – 6, kicking up a nasty quartering sea and we were sailing fast if not comfortably; however as the gusts got even stronger we were forced to put in so many rolls that the boom almost touched the transom. This made the boat unbalanced and very difficult to steer so I reduced the jib by tying a knot in it.

By now we were tearing along almost out of control surfing on the face of the waves for minutes at a time with the bows well out of the water, the tiller vibrated like a live thing and the noise of the wind in the rigging made conversation impossible. It was the most exciting sailing either of us had ever experienced so that we were almost oblivious to the imminent danger of broaching. When helming, the strain of concentrating was such that we found that half hourly tricks were enough, the other trying to rest on the centre thwart in between frequent pumping.

I was now intrigued to see that whenever Roger came off the helm, and before he lit the inevitable cigarette he took off his oilskins, no easy task given the motion. Eventually my curiosity overcame me and I asked the reason. It appeared that whilst he was steering he was quite unworried, but had no faith in my ability and did not want to be swimming in his oilies. With great restraint I refrained from asking where he planned on swimming to.

By midnight I felt that we must have run our distance but we had seen no sign of any lights and it was very dark and still blowing hard, I began to be worried about our possible position. Fortunately a shout from Roger drew my attention to a light almost on the nose and although positive identification was very difficult I was sure that it must be Anvil Point and from its height we were far too close for comfort.

Gybing with the boom so low was going to be difficult as well as risky but having tried to tack round two or three times and failing to get the boat through the wind in the big seas we had to gybe since we were by now very close in. Once round we shot along the coast with the chalk cliffs looming over us to port and were relieved to recognise Old Harry at least we now knew where we were.

Neither of us had so far given a thought to the problem of arriving in the dark in such conditions, I was all for beating into shelter in Studland and waiting for daylight, though as we later found out this would have been impossible. Roger claimed that since we both thought we knew the harbour like the backs of our hands we should press on, so having spotted the Bar Buoy we sailed up the swash with Roger steering.

In through the Haven with wind and tide under us the first thing I recognised was Aunt Betty flashing past and almost immediately we were amongst the X Boats and hurriedly gybed once more to get to the Dolphin trots. Too late we realised that we had missed our mooring and desperately tried to beat back, but with so little sail she would not go to windward and after several near collisions with moored boats we finally anchored inshore in front of the Club and lay exhausted on the bottom boards and slept.

The postscript to our adventure was that we were taken to task by the Commodore for being foolhardy and some days later I received a curt note from H. M. Customs demanding to know why I had not cleared on arrival; I discovered that their information had come from an interview Roger had given to the local press.

Peter Chittenden

Illustration by Dawn Goodson