Channel Islands Sailing, The Swinge was exciting but so were Alderney, Guernsey and Jersey.
11 January 2026 · 22 min · 881 views · Braye Harbour, Alderney
Boats stranded on Guernsey’s muddy harbor at low tide
What this video covers
A Baltic Yachts 42 DP sails the Channel Islands in late spring/early summer, covering Alderney, Guernsey, and Jersey on a passage from Cherbourg. The central incident occurs in the Swinge, the tidal race between Alderney and Burhou: the crew used waypoint tide tables from the previous year — correct month and day, wrong year — and hit two-metre breaking waves over the starboard bow with a 7-knot current running, making it impossible to turn back.▶ 5:35 Marie was thrown into the coaming; both crew were bruised but made it through.▶ 6:25 At Alderney's Braye Harbour, check-in requires completing a form and dropping it in a yellow box on the pier; the island uses Channel Islands currency.▶ 0:54 St. Peter Port, Guernsey, sends a customs officer out by RIB with documents in a ziplock bag; the inner harbour uses a concrete sill to hold roughly two metres of water at low tide, trapping boats until the tide rises.▶ 7:42 Bilge-keel boats sit upright in the drying outer harbour.▶ 12:31 The 27-mile passage to Jersey in haze and fog cleared only about a mile offshore, revealing breaking waves on rocks before the crew motored into St. Helier's granite-walled inner harbour at 3.5 metres over the sill.▶ 17:53 Verifying tide-table year, not just month and day, is the hard lesson from the Swinge.
Boats in this video
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