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..)