Five go to Seaview

...with the obvious apologies to Enid for the post title, I am pleased to advise that boats have again been  inconvenienced, and the Jolly Boys have once again taken to the seas..  this time in t'other Dave's boat 'Kings Ransom' - fresh from her exploits on the mud of a few weeks back. On a slightly more serious note though, this trip was a cracker - not in terms of distance, or where we went, but more because of the ways we did it, and also the fact we were outside of our comfort zone for a little while - this wasn't unexpected, but thanks indeed to t'other Dave for actually still inviting us..

Anyway - I'm jumping ahead of the story - the team convened at the sailing club at 09:00 for what was hoped to be a 10:00 start, but by the time we had been ferried out to Ransom in the rubadub (powered by the quite fantastically awesome Torqueedo electric outboard..  bloody amazing piece of kit), had a chat, had a cup of tea, and got ready we were already a little late.. 😀

HT was 11:45'ish and decidedly Spring'ish (you'll see why later) at 4.7mtr, and the plan was to do a double tide'er, hopefully sneaking back on to the mooring sometime after 20:00/20:30'ish, as the next HT was almost exactly 12 hours later and slightly bigger. Target for the day was Seaview on the Isle of Wight where we were hoping to get a club mooring and some lunch at Seaview Sailing Club.

Arriving Seaview - sailing club slipway directly ahead

The Westerly's that had been forecast all day, pretty much turned up on cue, and the entire trip was on winds from either west or just north of west, but it was a grey old day at times and more than a touch of Autumn about it in a fairly solid force 4 - having said that, the sun did shine on occasion, and it was lovely to be out in the east Solent for a change.

Arriving Seaview we found out that the club was not open for food as it was end of season (the boatman who bought us in from the club moorings told us that most of the houses in Seaview were holiday homes, and as schools were going back next week, the owners had gone back to their primary residences!), but we got an absolutely excellent lunch in the Old Fort pub [clicky] next door to the sailing club - stunning fish and chips, good beer selection, and very much recommended.

Departing Seaview- glorious evening - one of the Southampton bound behemoths just entering the Solent behind us..

The plan had always been to come home to the mooring via the Nab tower [clicky] but the wind direction being what it was it had taken us until just after two just to get to Seaview, so over a slightly longer lunch than we had expected we decided to kick that into touch and go directly back to Chichester (after coffee and cake 'natch), leaving at about 4'ish. In this wind direction it would have been a long rolly downwind run to the Nab and we simply didn't fancy it..

Dropping the mooring off Seaview about 4'ish (we sailed off, no one can say the Jolly Boys aren't occasionally experimental 😏) we headed back to the West Pole, which after a rolly (wind and tide driven lumps) very broad reach/run under genoa, we reached a few hours later.. it was beginning to get dusk as we headed slowly into the harbour, threading our way through an evening dinghy race at HISC, but as we were in no hurry we just carried on under genoa, occasionally being headed, and just squeezing past Marker before we attempted to roll the genoa away (unsuccessfully - suspect halyard wrap) and turned the engine on (successfully). 

A couple of sail ties sorted the genoa, and just shy of half 7 we edged into the Northney channel thinking we might as well try and see how far we can get - it was a rising tide so no harm was going to be done..

Stunning skies at sunset..

Slightly seriously, there then ensued what I thought was a damn good team effort..  following the port lights to the entrance of the marina was fairly simple, but as we got to the last one, just about where Ransom had gone aground last time, t'other Dave fired up his 12v million candle light mega torch (sight exaggeration 😁) that we were going to use to see the unlit channel markers in the ditch. Unfortunately when he plugged it in, it blew a fuse and we lost all the electrics (😏) 

I grabbed the tiller and aimed us back at the last red marker, while Rod and t'other Dave returned power (successfully) which gave us instruments, most importantly, depth and also found a couple of torches. Rod fired up his tablet which has Navionics on it as a back up (which would help but we weren't sure how much, and how accurate it would be given the location and recent navigation changes) and Smithy and Dave started peering into the gloom. Turned back into the ditch, managed to find the first marker, we then followed the rest by profiling them against the lights of the bridge in the distance. Turned the final cardinal, headed towards the mooring and the rubadub, and Ransom glided to a halt in the mud just by the mooring buoy - result!

 

Smithy's awesome video of our slow approach in the dark.. 😁

We were well pleased with that - three and a half hours before HT on a Spring (you can see the Blue Super Moon in the video at one point) - probably would have had a little more water that early on a neap but hey ho. Beer, more cake, a trip to shore in the tender and we were away home by 22:30'ish...  brilliant day out.

Log:

Distance: 26.8* (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)
Wind (Speed; Direction): F4 ; W going NWxW
Sail Plan: Full main and genoa
Speed (Max/average in knots): 5.0 / 3.5*

* estimates - GPS track unavailable