Out with the Jolly Boys...

The Jolly Boys convened for a day sail last week - due to various wrinkles not all of us had managed to make the last few sailing opportunities, so things were looking good for this one as we could all make it ..  that is until t'other Dave threw himself off his mountain bike over the preceding weekend, exploding his elbow, and then getting admitted to hospital for the next 4 days while they pumped him full of anti-b's and then rebuilt said appendage..  being the good fellows we are of course, we decided to go sailing anyway..   😁

Lot of easterly's at the moment, not sure why, but we are experiencing record breaking temperatures at the moment, there are monumental barometric highs, there's clearly an element of heat driven sea breeze, but the prevailing wind is usually SW'ly

Anyway 10'ish found us all on board, temperature already climbing, breeze disappointing and NE'ly - downwind run to Cowes - decision taken...  run out of the harbour, plenty of water to take the inner swashway (close to the sea wall) before finding open water, and the first major event of the day - a chance to hoist AmiLy's big asymmetric, also known as the "Blue Meany".. 

"Go Canada" - huge - IMOCA class.. if you look carefully  there's a bloke about 75% way up the mast..

We don't get to use this much - it's a big old sail, and we're not used to it, and the scope for disaster is huge, but it went OK..  sail with snuffer was raised, snuffer dropped, sail filled, and even with jib doused we had another knot and a half, which given speeds due to low wind was in the region of 5 or 6, is a considerable lift..  our problems came when we went to gybe to head over to the island..  decision to leave the sail up and allow it to swivel round and pull in on new sheet was unsuccessful..  we played for 15 or 20 minutes getting used to it to see if we could make it, but it wasn't going to swivel or go cleanly to the other tack, so we decided to drop it and head for Osbourne Bay to anchor up while Smithy had  a swim..

Never pales..  Cowes in the summer... 

Hour later we pulled the hook and headed into Cowes for lunch, which was at our favourite venue in Cowes, the Island sailing Club..  lovely food, good beer, nice people, fantastic venue..

Alongside Cowes...

The wind could be seen to be coming up throughout lunch and the wind was also going round more southerly - a good long stretchy beat until about 3/4 of the way home when the wind dropped and we had to put the engine on..  about this time we had the second major event of the day when this bugger (following) came powering down the Solent on full chat, causing us to take multiple avoiding actions as we wouldn't figure out for the life of us, which of the two usual channels for heavy shipping he was going to take.. he could see we were worried I reckon - 'cos he gave us 3 hoots... at least it wasn't 5.. 😀

"I am operating astern propulsion"..  didn't look like it!

No harm done, and a leisurely and gentle sail back into the harbour saw us tied up about 7'ish, and home by 8, slightly frazzled by the sun round the edges, and ever so vaguely salt encrusted..  glorious day...

You can take your Sydney's and New York's, I reckon this is one of the loveliest harbour entrances in the known world...

Log:

Distance: 26.65 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)
Wind (Speed; Direction): F3-4 going F2 later; NE going round SSE by end of day
Sail Plan: Full main and jib, plus asymmetric
Speed (Max/average in knots):  8.1 / 2.5