Four blow the cobwebs out..

...and so the 2024 cruising season comes to an end ..  well for the Jolly Boys anyway..

The overnighter format seems to be working well for the "four old men crammed in a small(ish) boat" scenario, and so it was that we decided we needed one last Summer '24 hurrah, and as we hadn't been to Yarmouth in years (it was 2021, as it happens) we thought we'd make that our destination for the trip..

Massive, and I mean massive (a 5mtr tide in Portsmouth the day we came back) Spring tides, for the two days we were away. It was also a midday HT which was not optimal, but was doable for both tidal assist and getting on and off the moorings where Ami-Ly is kept..

The team convened on the day of the jaunt at Rod's gaff at 07:00, and a mere hour later were on Ami-Ly and heading for the harbour entrance - weather sunny, good breeze, and anticipation high. 

Sausages went in the frying pan as we came through the harbour entrance, and we had a stonking tidal assisted run down to Gilkicker helped along by sausage baps and cups of tea, before hardening up for a reach along the edge of the north shipping channel and then cutting the corner at Calshot between a bulk carrier, and a tanker carrying something nasty as she had a tug hanging off the back to help her round the corners.

Shot past Beaulieu entrance (still on the tide) and a mere four hours (!) after we left Portsmouth we were motoring into Yarmouth - almost as good as the near mythical blast we had in 2016 [clicky] in "Ocean Waves"!

Yarmouth was middling busy - good number of boats but plenty of spaces, and we were soon parked up in a good spot just opposite the RNLI all weather lifeboat. I like Yarmouth, it's an interesting mix of commercial (the car ferry leaves from the same harbour entrance as the leisure/marina stuff) and scenic. The town is pretty, and the time zone is abut GMT-50 years.. 😀 Four pubs in Yarmouth though and all doing food except one (kitchen closed on Tuesdays) - we ate in the Kings Head and I thought it was good..

I'd like to say we all slept well that night, but it was fairly noisy with wind and tidal movement - in fact the wind didn't really drop noticeably until about 4 in the morning!

Day 2:

Plan for  the day (apart from getting home eventually😏) was going to be tidal driven. We were at almost the western most end of the Solent and looking to get to just about the most eastern end, but into the face of that continuing, and now slightly stronger easterly (head) wind and there was no way any of us wanted to motor all the way home against a foul tide (and it was Springs as mentioned so they were fierce!)

Easiest way to get back we decided was to split the trip - we'd do the morning part with the last of the east going morning tide to Cowes, get there before the tide turned, and then have lunch, snooze, read, and generally laze until the tide turned in our favour again, or at least slack, for the last bit back to Pompey...

The plan worked well but it required an early leave - and it looked like a number of other boats had had the same idea. As we were getting ready to go there was a steady stream leaving Yarmouth and heading east. We were up at 7, showered, tea'd, and off we went just after 8 - we only had two or three hours of usable tide, so we did it all on motor, and we were moored up in East Cowes by 11!

Yacht Squadron, and Gurnard in the distance

More tea, trip to the Co-op for milk (for more tea), and then a leisurely lunch in the Lifeboat - thoroughly recommended, we reckon it 's the beast eating emporium in Cowes..

Snoozing, reading, and laying in the sun followed, while Smithy went walking to get his steps in, but at just after 3, we dropped the mooring and headed for the Solent - the wind was building, direction the same, and we'd already put the second reef in the main in preparation. Tide was still slightly foul but we needed to get on with it or we'd never get home.. 😏

Paddle ship Waverley [clicky]

Just outside the harbour we headed up into a very brisk ENE'ly and raised the main, waved at the passengers on Waverley, bore away slightly for Osborne Bay, rolled out a bit of jib (about 50%) and then settled in for the best fun I've had on the helm in an age - she was on rails, and despite two reefs and half a jib we were getting 6.5's and 6.8's SOG, upwind, and against the last of the tide... even the huge gusts we got every now and again didn't knock her off the rails, she was balanced, no luffing and going like a train.

Three or four tacks and it was clear we wouldn't get on the transit under sail and the alternative was a longish beat out to the end of the main channel - we were tired, so about 3 hours after we'd left Cowes we were heading through the harbour entrance after turning the engine on to allow the passage down the swashway.

Dead low water was 17:36, and given it was the aforementioned Springs only 0.6mtrs! We were there about an hour after that, but there still wasn't a cat in hells chance we were going to get on to the pontoon. We'd left the day before at about 8 and that was with just 0.4 mtr under the keel and 3 hours after dead low - clearly we needed to wait a while, but we had sausages, beer, crisps, tea/coffee, milk and cake - we were not going to starve..😀

Picked up one of the RNSA moorings over on the Gosport side, the sausages went in the pan and the beer was racked open while we tidied up the boat, put everything away, and got her in all respects ready to depart the moment we were ashore on the pontoon.

..there are worse places to sit and wait for the tide to fill in, and this definitely wasn't one of them!

..we eventually dropped our temporary mooring at about 8'ish and half an hour later, after a passage across harbour in the dark, we were on the pontoon - the end of another cracking two days away.

Log:

Distance: 55.44 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)

Wind (Speed; Direction):

• 17th: F4 gusting F5; ENE
• 18th: F5 gusting F6 occasional F7; ENE 

Sail Plan: 

• 17th: Full main; full genoa
• 18th: Reefed main(2nd reef); reefed genoa (about 50%)

Speed (Max/average in knots): 

• 17th: 7.5 / 1.7
• 18th: 7.9 / 4.7