Isles of Scilly, Cornwall & the Channel Islands

It’s been another incredible summer on Moana. Yet again she has carried us swiftly and safely over the sea. This time it’s been ‘local’, not straying too far from UK waters, save a two week excursion to Guernsey, Sark and Alderney.

Freddie had school trips for the first two weeks of the summer break. First of all CCF camp in the north east of England, followed immediately by a Geography field trip to Chamonix in the French Alps. We eventually headed off from Milford in late July and spent a brief night in Dale before catching the tail of a NW F8 to take us directly to the St Martins in the Isles of Scilly.

We stopped here briefly last summer on route to the Gironde, but this time the weather was much kinder and we had lucked out with the start of a 10 day period of settled weather and sunshine. When conditions at right there are few places in the world which are better. The gorgeous colours of land and sea blend together with rugged scenery and incredible white sand beaches and crystalline water. Gareth, Freddie’s school friend had joined us for the first couple of weeks and he had just been subjected to a sailing ‘baptism of fire’ during the 16 hour passage from Pembrokeshire!

Fortunately the calm conditions meant sheltered anchorages with very little roll. This time we managed to explore St Martins, Tresco, St Marys, Gugh and St Agnes moving about to various anchorages in the light conditions. The Abbey Gardens were superb, we caught the Tresco summer fete on the cricket field and the boys even had some success in the ‘ergo’ rowing challenge set up by the Gig rowers.

St Agnes had wonderful walks, ice cream and, of course, the brilliant Turk’s Head pub to wile away the evening with good beer, food and even old friends. We caught up with John, Liz and Niamh Lynch. Niamh is in her second year at Oxford and was on the Islands studying some of the rarer nesting birds which visit during the spring and summer.

It was super to see them after being so close to a chance meeting on St. Martins a couple of days earlier. Before the obligatory drink at the Turk's Head we even had time to take a trip out to the anchorage and make quick tour around Moana. Liz and Niamh quickly got their sea legs, but John was quite happy to get back to dry land.

The wind eventually moved round from the north and we sailed non stop to Falmouth to drop Gareth off to meet Daniel, his Dad, and spend some time provisioning and doing boat jobs. After a couple of days we headed off round the Helford to see Hairy, Vic and Calypso, old friends from our time in the Caribbean.

Moana rarely stays in any anchorage for long but this this time it was great to spend more time in Helford River. We had nearly a week there and could settle and socialise properly with Hairy, Vic and Calypso. They laid on a superb 'surf & turf' BBQ with topside of beef and fresh crayfish, courtesy of the thoroughly charming and entertaining Rolley, a local fisherman who runs a boat out of Newlyn in between effortlessly wooing celebrities who find themselves escaping to South Cornwall. We returned the compliment later in the week by inviting them to sample our raid the cupboard 'boat curry'. Vic phoned a few hours beforehand to ask if Tim, their friend and neighbour, could join us. 'I think you'll like him' she says, he writes lyrics and loves his cricket. Thanks for the intel Vic! We had a fabulous evening together and, of course, Vic was right, Tim was brilliant company. A 'Surreal but nice' experience as Hugh Grant would say in Notting Hill. Unfortunately, we couldn't join Sir Tim a few days later for drinks as we'd sailed north to see the Lost Gardens of Heligan.

The short trip to Portmelon and Meva did mean we could return to Helford later to see Jonathan, who had been on one of his guiding trips in Ireland. On returning to Helford we met in the yacht club for a meal and had drinks the following day at his house up the hill. It was wonderful to see him again and Florence, his daughter, was also back so it was great to catch up. Unfortunately Hairy couldn't make drinks as he'd been up most of the night delivering bread from their Helston bakery as one of the drivers was ill.

Making use of the strongest SW breeze for the past month, we rose before dawn to leave the anchorage near The Voose and set sail to Guernsey. It was a feisty passage to say the least. The wind was fine, it was just the grotty short seas you get in the approaches to the English Channel. Needless to say we flew, but with more than a few waves breaking close to the aft starboard quarter. As night closed in we rounded Les Grunes de Jerbourg and took shelter in Ferman Bay, before heading round to the marina in St. Peter Port in the morning.

The next few days were spent enjoying the Guernsey food, taking in the German Signals HQ and La Valette Underground Military Museum and walking and exploring. Freddie picked up a VAT free Lego Technics model of The Emirates Team NZ AC75 and Moana picked up 280 litres of tax free diesel at 91p/litre!

It was then over to the world's first 'Dark Sky island', Sark, for superb island walks, dramatic scenery, crystal clear water, huge tides and, as a consequence, a rolly anchorage. The island is a self governing British Crown Dependency with its own set of laws (based on Norman Law) and its own parliament. In fact it was a royal fiefdom until 2008. Although extremely fascinating, you can spend hours on Wikipedia which you'll never get back trying to understand the subtleties of the system of government and politics.

The parliament building on Sark

There are no cars allowed, only transport by foot, tractor, horse drawn cart or bicycle (electric ones are allowed!). Using Dixcart Bay as our main route onto the island we had a couple of days exploring and going back in time. Our food highlight of the entire trip was a late lunch on the terrace at Hugo's Bar & Bistro enjoying the fresh hand dived scallops.

The ripping tide acted like a sling sling shot taking us north to Alderney. Relatively benign conditions allowed us to power through The Swinge and around the breakwater into Braye. With good shelter from all sides except the North Easterlies, we anchored SE of the moorings just off the beautiful harbour beach. The dingy dock is available at all points of the large tides and the vigilant harbour staff keep an eye on whole bay.

Alderney is a truly wild and beautiful island and a paradise for a history buff like Freddie. It falls within the Bailiwick of Guernsey and send two representatives ' People's Deputies' to the 38 seat States of Guernsey. Victorian forts dotted around with WW2 German wartime observation posts, fortifications and bunkers hidden in the landscape. The main observation tower, The Odeon, at the north end, is an extraordinary, progressive looking Bauhaus inspired structure, belying it's deplorable originals. Like nearly all of the wartime building work on Alderney and some on Guernsey, the labour was often supplied by slave camps located on the island. There were four sites including two concentration camps, Lager Sylt in the south west & Lager Norderney and two 'work' camps Lager Borkum and Lager Helgoland. The labour camps were supposed to be manned by 'volunteers' from around Europe and the Concentration camps housed mainly jews and Russian POWs, with some Spanish. History of the camps appears to have been neglected until fairly recently. Most of those who died on the island (or travelling to and from it) weren't British. The majority were Russian so Britain deferred the follow up to Russia. As a result of this and with the post war Cold War atmosphere and war crimes being conducted in the west, the perpetrators were not rigorously pursued and surviving Russian POWs were reportedly even sent to the Gulags for surrendering and not fighting to the death for Mother Russia. It was not until 1966 that the Hammond War Memorial was set up by local residents around the original boulder (the only memorial until that date). However, this dark past has recently been bought into the light in an attempt to face up to, and understand, what actually happened on the Island. In the summer of 2023 the UK Government announced it was to carry out a review, under UK Special Envoy Lord Pickles, of the number of prisoners who died on Alderney during the Nazi occupation. In 2024 it was reported that far more of the prisoners are likely to have died than previously thought, possibly up to triple that of the previous official death toll of 389.

What is clear is that the island has yet to make peace with itself regarding its wartime history. As a result only the Odeon has any information available for visitors to learn to truth about what has happened. There is no museum with artifacts or objective historical information. The bunkers, trenches, tunnels, shelters, Tubruck pits, gun emplacements and observations posts are practically untouched, a paradise for the enthusiastic visitor who can walk easily around the coast from stronghold to stronghold. It was fantastic!

After a amazing week in Alderney we left with incredible memories of the island but some confusion about the people. Unlike most islands where people seem confident with their 'identity'. It wasn't obvious here and who knows why. Maybe it's just us...

The final week of our trip bought some of the best weather. The cross channel passage had light airs (and initially very strong tides). By the time we reached the westward moving shipping lane we were motoring in flat calm seas and gorgeous light. It was nearing midnight before we were on the approach to Sovereign Harbour in Eastbourne. A short stop off Folkestone and a tide assisted run past Dover and Ramsgate took us into the Black Deep and up into the Orwell River. Back at Fox's once again for the winter and a lovely reunion with Jo's family at the Butt & Oyster.