Sunday amble...

Blimey - second sail in two days - what's wrong with me.. 😀

So - one of those niggle'some kind of days, one of those days when everything feels like it's a little bit against the grain.. starting off with my water bottle emptying itself into the bottom of my bag..

Quite a different day to the day before..  forecasts still showing F3 gusting F4, but the winds were up the scale in both cases, so top F3 gusting top F4 - either way a bit meatier to say the least..  I was in two minds about putting a reef in before I left, but the real time reports from the CAMBERMET  weather beacon at the bottom of the harbour were showing no more than F4 so I went with full main..

What was significantly different was the direction, SE'ly, usually a good thing, but for yesterdays sail it was damn twitchy, going between E and S of SE almost at a whim, and usually when I least needed one or the other! As you can see from the log below - long stretches on an almost direct down harbour beat interrupted by short tacks when the wind went round a few points and made the next channel marker too much of a pinch.. It was also very gusty, the autopilot was struggling, and I helmed for most of the down harbour beat..   

15:48 HT, 4.8mtrs, huge amount of water sloshing about as you can see from the tracks on the tack across harbour. Motored to almost Marker and then put the sails up to see how she would do, and left the motor off until the return trip..  Vigorous beat down to HISC, lots and lots of boat traffic including fleets of dinghy's racing across the fairway but it was sunny, warm, and the breeze was blowing..

Tacked just off HISC, and bore away only to be confronted by an entire fleet of dinghy's line abreast across the channel..  nothing you can do but maintain course and let them move round you, no issues so it worked..  ten minutes later though there was a gust causing Sparrow to head up, just as a large cruiser was trying to overtake - suffice to say I managed to spill wind and drop to windward and he did a quick 360 and any issues were avoided - not sure who was to blame, but he was a bit close, in quite lively conditions so I'll call it a 50:50.. 😀

Fast (fast) broad reach up the harbour - by now a solid F4 - was seeing 5's, and 5+'s, and even reaching she was trying to broach, so definitely windy, and definitely too much for the pilot..

Headed up and dropped the main just shy of Emsworth Beacon, and ran on under genoa, before winding that away as we approached Northney, and motored back..

Mooring pick up was a doddle, but there continued to be some niggles..

1/. The engine is idling fast - it has since the beginning of the season, but it is getting to the point where I need to address the issue rather than ignore it

2/. The floor pan of the outboard is showing (clean) oil - I need to check the levels next time I go out, and I've cleaned it to see if the issue recurs or is just an old accidental spill

3/. The pickup chain had jammed itself in the riser under the mooring buoy - so that took 15 minutes to unwind/unwrap.. no idea how it happened, but because of how busy it was I had locked the tender to the pick up buoy so maybe it had spun in the wind and tide..

4/. Finally, as I was putting it away the brackets for the cockpit tidy "exploded" - new nuts and bolts sourced and added..

I was more than happy to get home and get a beer! LOL.. 

Log:

Distance: 9.09 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)
Wind (Speed; Direction): SExE/SExS; F3 gusting F4
Sail Plan: Full main/90% genoa
Speed (Max/average in knots): 5.7 / 3

At last...

Between this..

Result of a small contretemps with the ground when I came off Gertrude, my electric bike..
..rest easy she came off considerably better than I did.. 😀

...and this...

..bye bye 48 hours I'll never get back (where I slept and took paracetamols alternately)..
but thankfully, very thankfully, that was about it for me..  "trust in the science", damn right..

...and also to be fair a weekend of almost flat calm windless'ness, I was more than a little ready to get out on the boat!

Huge tide weekend then, Springs with a vengeance, 4.3Mtr tide, but along with atmospheric pressure (sky high) easily higher than that..

Nothing outstanding then, on the boat for 1300'ish, aforesaid HT at 14:45'ish, so a lot of water sloshing around, and the pub across the way were having their annual raft race for the first time in two years so all in all, damn busy!

Old oyster boat Terror was out giving rides..  she's surprisingly quick..

No plans for the day, which was sunny, and very warm with a decent breeze, that you could tell was being assisted by the heat..  motored to Emsworth Beacon, and with the wind almost directly up the harbour, carried on motoring to Marker (or I could have said good bye to the rest of the afternoon just tacking to get there against tide) where the laundry went up, and I launched off across Pilsey Sands, tacking  back to the main channel when the depths went to sub point seven of a metre...  with two hours to HT even if I'd touched I would have been OK.

Arrived off East Head on roughly HT less 30 minutes, picked my way gingerly across the main channel (every man/woman and his dog/cat were out, on anything that floated), rounded Snowhill..

...and then had an absolutely delightful goosewing run on the tiller pilot all the way to the top of the harbour..

Dropped the sails in Sweare Deep, and back on the mooring after almost exactly 3 hours of  very relaxing sailing..

Brilliant..

Log:

Distance: 11.58 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)
Wind (Speed; Direction): F3 gusting F4; SWxS coming around more southerly as the afternoon went on
Sail Plan: Full main and genoa
Speed (Max/average in knots): 4.9 / 3.1