2021 Late Summer Cruise, Days 10 - 12, Hugh Town - St Helen's Pool.

Thursday was spent getting a shower, a brief wander around town, shopping and just "chilling out" listening to the test match commentary. On Friday I walked, very slowly, around the "garrison" area of St Mary's (pics below) built in stages from the 17th to 19th century with a few additions in 1900 and again during WWII.

The Garrison Area

The Garrison Area is west of the town of Hugh, the harbour is to the north of the town and Porth Cressa is to the south. At the top of the hill is an old "star" fort now redeveloped and extended as a hotel.

Slide show of my pictures in St Marys, page through by clicking the arrows or click in the centre of the pic to view from Flickr in a new window or full screen: 

To St Helens Pool.

Sunday was an early start to ensure plenty of time to get to the other side of the islands and back again if the anchorages in St Helen's Pool and Old Grimsby were full or looked ropey. With lots of rocks and shallow water it makes sense to move about in the second half of the flood tide.

My track from Hugh Town to St Helen's Pool (red) and an exit
route through Crow Sound (blue). All the green areas dry at springs
(Lowest Astronomical Tide) and much dries on most tides. 

The route out of St Helen's Pool via
the "Gap"

It was somewhat surprising to see many familiar boats around the islands, at least a dozen of them, some like "Marguerite" seen at Cawsand, St Mawes and again in St Helen's Pool were clearly just following the same route as me, but several I have seen on other cruises.

Tomorrow will be a 06:30 start to catch the tide back to the mainland. The start will likely be a bit tense, one option is to the north through "St Helen's Gap" with a navigable passage only 100 yards wide that is not marked and there are no transits, you just have to aim for just left of centre between two visible rooks some distance away. The advantage is that this leads straight to deep water and if the wind is from the NE quadrant it gives a better angle to the wind. 

The second option is to the east through Crow Sound going through a lot of shallow water, navigate through or around a tidal race / over-falls and potentially having to go more upwind once the engine goes off.

Fortunately these days GPS will make things much easier than in days gone by.

The tidal range here is not significantly higher than than many places in the channel, today when we are half way between springs and neaps it is 3.5 metres compared with 3.6m at Falmouth and 3.5m at Newlyn but is dwarfed by the 5.9m at Guernsey. What makes the tide so important is the large number of rocks, big and small and wide expanses that dry or almost so.

The view from St Helens Pool towards Old Grimsby taken
shortly before high water.

And at low water

Slide show of my pictures from St Marys to St Helens Pool, page through by clicking the arrows or click in the centre of the pic to view from Flickr in a new window or full screen:

 

Click here for the trip back to the mainland.