Seals!

Fantastic morning out with the family this week with Chichester Harbour water Tours [clicky] on one of their seal watching trips..

I've seen the seals many times on my various ambles round the harbour, but this is without a doubt the closest I've been to them..

..but not too close - most impressed with the instructions from the boat skipper on the day to 'keep it quiet', 'don't move too fast', but most of all to 'enjoy the views of these Grey (they have the longer noses) and Harbour seals'..

..most impressive herd (??).. colony..  I counted 36+ minimum, all sizes, and some still out swimming..

..they pull themselves out on to the sandbanks along the edge of Thorney on low tides - apparently to digest the 7-15 kilos of fish a day they eat - they hunt on the high tides..

Very much recommended..  and fascinating to go further into Oar Rythe than I've been before - skipper reckoned he had a metre or two under the keel at dead low water...

Log:

Distance: 10.9 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)
Wind (Speed; Direction):  n/a
Sail Plan: n/a
Speed (Max/average in knots): 8 / 6.5

Marker to Emsworth..

Another 'hard work' one...

13:37 HT and wall to wall sunshine so despite the fact it was a Sunday (mistake #1) I decided to go for a sail..  forecast was for both ends of a F4 and as it turned out that was upper half of a 4 to top 4, so some reefs were the first order of the day when I got on board. Having made a dogs dinner of that (she was lying to tide rather than wind so it was awkward indeed) I dropped the mooring and made off down the ditch..

Forecast was also for a SE'ly (mistake #2) and coupled with a big tide (4.7 mtrs) it was always going to be hard work...

Needs must though so engine refuelled, we cast off for an adventure - I ended up motor sailing all the way to Marker - with the wind and tide dead on the nose most of the way - when just before Marker I hit a solid wall of Opi's coming up harbour on a dead run - very exciting playing dodge the Opi for a while

Optimists...!  'fasands of them...! (said in your best Colour Sergeant Bourne/Nigel Green voice)

Once past Marker though, I could see that the bottom of the harbour was wall to wall dinghy's and a long motor sail away - so "sod it" quoth I, turned, gybed, and for a change headed off up the Emsworth Channel to Emsworth...

Fairly rare sight at the top of the harbour - wing foiler..

Lots and lots of boats about, moving and on moorings, and with a couple of boats up my chuff waiting to go through (probably to the marina) I exercised a little due caution, turned, tacked and headed back for home..

It was good to be out on the water, but I crave something with a little less 'south' in the next wind, please... 😁

Notes:

• 3.5 litres fuel added

Log:

Distance: 7.94 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)
Wind (Speed; Direction):  Mid to top F4 ; SSE
Sail Plan: Reefed main and 75% genoa
Speed (Max/average in knots):  4.6 / 2.8

Laying in Lymington...

The Jolly Boys have been on their first overnighter this season...  and very definitely the best sail we've had this season..

Destination was Lymington which is the far end of the Solent from us, though having said that it's still only 25 miles'ish pontoon to pontoon..  in order to do trips like this, and Rod's (Captain my captain) passage plan reckoned on 6 hours, we really do need to do an overnight.

The team convened at Rod's gaff at 07:30 as the plan was to be on the boat and motoring by half 8 in order to take advantage of that near mythically good Solent travelator (tide) which was west bound from about then and good for 5 or more hours of extra oomph..

As it turns out my plot says we left at exactly that time - amazing.. 😏

Forecast was for F3 gusting 5 (really!)  and NE'ly, and all of us had looked at that, remembered all the previous crappy forecasts, made a mental note of "oh, yeah", but bugger me if it didn't deliver it exactly as described!

Hooning...  Pompey in the distance..

What a sail...  four and a half hours to Lymington blew the passage plan out of the water - we shot past Gilkicker within an hour, and were off Southampton only a short while after - we were absolutely flying! Wind wide on the beam (so the genoa was getting good exposure) and a couple of knots or more of tide with us, and we were regularly seeing 7.5 plus SOG

Just after lunch saw us tied up in Lymington Yacht Haven - booked purely because in the personal opinion of the Jolly Boys they are the nicest showers in perhaps the entire Solent - if not the world.. 😁

(On one of our previous trips, by the way, we had been stormbound in Lymington for a couple of days, and as it howled with rain, and blew like fury, most of us ended up having a half dozen or so showers over the two days just because they were so nice and we were bored.. 😂)

Dinner that evening was Indian and tasty, and trust me, we slept well..

Over breakfast the next morning we discussed the plans for the return trip...  forecast was for F3 gusting 5 again, but if we were to believe it, this time SW'ly..  if that came off it would mean we'd had a decent breeze on the quarter in both directions so despite the fact it had been right the day before, there was still a healthy amount of scepticism - the forecasts showed the wind going round 180' from NE within an hour.. 

There's some serious sausage action going on in that picture...

...and bugger me if it didn't!

In order to make the travellator though we'd have to wait, and it really is a hard hard slog going that far in the Solent with an adverse tide...

We eventually left at about half 2 in the afternoon, and even that was a little early as the tide wasn't due to turn until half 3'ish, but the berth in the Marina was needed, and we'd already moved once, so it was time to go...

First hour was indeed hard work, the wind was doing it's thing but the direction was a little more west than we would have liked, so the genoa was making hard work of it behind the main - a pole would have helped..

Tide turned just as we were coming up to Gurnard, and then we began to fly with a steady succession of 7+'s as we rocketed past Cowes..  we were on home waters now - the Spinnaker Tower clear to see

...the first of two...

More champagne sailing as the sun shone, the sea glinted, and we dodged the liners coming out of Southampton water. We rolled the genoa away and went with just the full main..

Took us an hour longer than the day before but we were still on the home pontoon by half 7'ish to end two days of the best sailing we've had in an age!

Now..  can we get another in before the end of the season???🤔

Log:

Blue out, yellow back, and either side of the Bramble Bank.. 😁

Distance: 47.04 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)

Wind (Speed; Direction): Almost perfect 😏 

• Day:1 F3 gusting F5 / NE'ly
• Day 2: F3 occasional gust of F4/F5 / WSW

Sail Plan: Full main and full genoa (on the way back, just main most of the time)
Speed (Max/average in knots):  7.7 / 4.2 (averaged over both days - actuals above..)

Hello old friend..

..been close, but it's the first time actually going round it this year.. but I jump ahead of myself..

Second trip on the boat in as many days - what's the world coming to..  either way the tides are beginning to get later now (13:58HT) but no smaller (a 4.73 Mtr tide!)

Winds forecast was F2's or 3's, with the wind was due to go SE'ly'ish, so I think it fair to say that the biggest pull for me was to get out on to the water where it was considerably cooler than ashore where we were having one of the hottest days of the year..

On the boat by just under 3.5 hours before HT, and got everything ready to go - engine warmed - we dropped the mooring just shy of 11:00.

Wind direction was poor, and I eventually pulled the main up just past Northney at around the same time I caught this little fellow - juvenile/adolescent bass

Wind was indeed on the light side and I was seeing 2 or 3 knots of adverse tide so the decision was taken to motor sail to the bottom of the harbour - the genoa wasn't working so I rolled that back again after a short experiment...

...and that was largely it for the whole of the trip down the harbour until I ducked away from a HUGE dinghy fleet at about Verner to cross the Pilsey Sands towards East Head..  where I then met another huge fleet...  I hadn't realised that its Fed Cup week in the harbour - they'll be racing every day in their hundreds...

..until I finally made the Itchenor channel and turned the engine off for a quick sail towards Camber and Bosham and then turning back to round Snowhill ("old friend") and a glorious goose wing run back up the harbour on the tail ends of the incoming tide...

...dinghy central... 

..brilliant day out, but at the same time hard work with all that engine duty.. 

Log:

Distance: 11.04 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)
Wind (Speed; Direction): F2 gusting F3 ; SSE
Sail Plan: Full main and 95% genoa
Speed (Max/average in knots): 4.8 / 2.8

Slosh..

First sail in over three weeks! The summer went south for a few weeks, doing what it did last summer, with a solid succession of grey and windy days not conducive to sailing in (for me) anyway - we even had our first named storm (Floris) which, even though the main effects were further north, had enough sting in the tail to provide some windy conditions down here in the south..

So it was that with a Saturday clear of other interruptions, a decent tide time, a decent forecast, and the promise of a bit of warm weather I grabbed the chance...

HT was 12:47 and a massive 4.43 Spring tide, and I was on the boat by half 9, covers off, engine warmed, and dropped the mooring a full 3 hours before HT, but not before I'd also given her another quick scrub along the waterline where the weed had already started to regrow following an intermediate barnacle and weed clean just a few weeks ago...  all the indications are that this is going to be a high growth summer both for marine and vegetable life..  crappy anitfoul does nothing...

Pulled the main up in the pool, and then bore away on a nice solid westerly breeze down the dtich before deploying the rod for the first time..

Fingers crossed..

Never caught a thing except weed all day.. 😏

Mahoosive spring tide and a lot of water was sloshing about, but the westerly helped us along. and even with a couple of knots of adverse tide we were turning in 2's and 2.5's SOG - single tack to the bottom of the harbour was another bonus

Passed the seal colony..

..no they aren't logs.. them's seals...

...and headed towards the blue sky...

I was very hopeful we might even get or nose out into the Solent but with a wind of this direction and a tide this strong, by the time I got to HISC the breakwater was sheltering us from breeze, and speed dropped to less than half a knot SOG, so I baled out just shy of West Winner and rode the tide home seeing 5.8's and 5.7's over the ground..

Fantastic day out - now need to find another trip before this tide disappears!

Log:

Distance: 9.59 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)
Wind (Speed; Direction): Both ends of a F4; W x S
Sail Plan: Full main and 50% genoa
Speed (Max/average in knots): 5.4 / 2.6