Across to Carteret.

 

Ti Gitu left St Aubin and we motored the 15 miles round to St Catherins bay on the East of Jersey. This is directly North of Gorey, where the castle is, and has a long breakwater protecting the bay from the North – but not the East - where the strong Easterly wind was forecast to come from in a few days.

The area has a lot of sea grass and there are moorings there designed not to damage the sea grass which apparently absorbs 35 times the amount of CO2 as the same area of rain forest. Normal boat moorings are on chain which at low tide swings around and scrapes the sea grass away. The authorities are now experimenting with ‘eco’ moorings which are elastic and don’t damage the sea bed so much.

We used one of these ‘eco’ moorings for the night and left the next morning for the 13 mile trip across to Carteret.

It was a gentle motor sail over until we arrived outside the entrance to be confronted with over 100 racing yachts milling around at the start line of a race which was right in the entrance to the river. We just slowly motored through them and despite us motoring and them sailing a number of them gave way to us which was very ‘gentlemanly’.

 

 We had to pass through this lot!

Carteret marina is enormous and there is a launch which meets you and takes you to your berth. They also do a 7 days for 5 which as the wind is force 7 Easterly for a while we have taken advantage of.