It was then off to the shops to get the food for the trip back home- there was no chance of going without this crossing! Soup, snacks and box drinks for half way across- something nice and warm and hearty, the trip back was a night one with an ETA in St Peter Port of about 1:00 am! Very cold out to sea at that hour, even without the wind chill factor due to the lack of anything breeze like at all! But before the off it was a quick dash to Pizza Hut to once more fuel ourselves for the ’strenuous’ sea passage!

The exit from the harbour can only be described as eventful! The gentleman who gracefully manoeuvred his great big hunk of motorboat on top of Mystere tried to redeem his earlier seamanship errors and helped let go of the mooring warps before waving us off on our return voyage. With the sun setting and water levels rising the passage to the marina gate was made. On arrival at the gate (reading a depth of 2.2 meters) there was a collection of yachts. One French yacht coming in, and 3 yachts (including Mystere) making their way out. The French yacht on reaching the gates decided that the water wasn’t deep enough to get in, so quickly engaged reverse, only to come to a slow standstill before spinning on her axis and going broadside in the mouth, therefore completely blocking it both as an entrance and exit! The rather large yacht in front of us saw this escapade and consequently had to stop also, selecting reverse and quickly stopped and began to reverse up. Mystere, with her little outboard (which although makes fantastic progress in forward) does lack the ability to manoeuvre backwards. All of a sudden there is a screaming engine noise and reverse is selected and she continues to move forward at the same speed as before. This forward propulsion appears to have increased due to the fact the yacht on her bow is now moving backwards at the same speed as we are moving towards them! This could get messy! The back of the large yacht also swings round…there is now one yacht wanting to come into the marina width ways across the mouth, a matching one the marina side, Mystere hurtling towards the side of the big one the marina side, and another 25 footer laughing from a safe distance!! Fortunately, just at the crucial moment the propeller blades dig into the water and Mystere is propelled backwards. Seconds later, the two yachts swing around again leaving a Mystere sized gap to squeeze through and it’s out full throttle into the open sea before the boats swing again and the gap closes once more!