Last trip to Cowes?

The day was kind of bookended by this beast..  

This is Virgin Cruises "Valiant Lady" which is in Portsmouth for the last time, as the 5 year contract between the cruise line and the City of Portsmouth Docks has come to an end. 

She was berthed in the cruise port just the other side of the water from AmiLy's resting place - the damn thing was so big it blotted out the sun, and the wind shadow reached to us.. 😏

Anyway - I jump ahead.. as usual.. 

Time to go out with the Jolly Boys - always good to have a trip out with them. We'd originally planned for this to be a two day'er, but as we head in to the cusp of Autumn, the weather is showing signs of letting up, and when we were planning at the beginning of the week, the Friday/second day was looking distinctly dismal (wind and rain) and we decided to cancel the overnight and stick with just the Thursday.

HT was 12:08 and Spring'ish at 4.49mtrs , but as we now know all too well, what we have to plan around when we're out on AmiLy is the low tide, as that is what enables the arrival or departure from the pontoon - she floats all the time, the issue is the exit on the corner at the end of the pontoon where it gets decidedly thin! We need about an hour and a half either side of  LT, but at 05:02 the first LT was never going to be an issue. 

Met at Rod's gaff then at 0900, and we dropped the mooring and were on our way by 09:50 - must be a record, surely?! With more south in the wind direction than usual, we also had the better angle of dangle for Cowes than we get with a 'more usual' SW'ly (nothing is usual/prevailing these days it sems to me - it can come from anywhere) and with Dave on the helm, we even managed to weather Gilkicker Point on one tack, which we then carried almost all the way to Cowes before the wind, which had been backing all morning, finally forced us to drop the sails just off Norris and motor in.. we could have tacked a couple of times to get us to the small boat channel, but we were only half a mile off the channel anyway..  err, and we were hungry* 😁

*and not only hungry, but thirsty to, we shoved the kettle on first thing to get the tea going only to find the gas run out, no worries said we, there's a spare... and that was empty too! 😨 We almost turned back there and then.. 😂

Mooring for the day was Shepherds Marina as that was where we had booked and paid for the overnight stay we we were now not using..  might as well get some value for the money paid. As Sheperds is in west Cowes, we now had a whole load more eating choices but chose the Island Sailing Club, as you can sit on the balcony there, with a glorious view of the mouth of the river and the entrance to Cowes.. 

Damn nice lunch it was as well..

At 05:02 the first LT was never an issue, but at 17:23 the second LT was going to be. There was no way we'd make it back an hour and a half before - we'd had a fast passage that morning but it had still taken two hours plus, and it was well after 14:30 by the time we'd finished lunch, gotten a takeaway coffee (😏) and sat around on the boat eating dessert (pastel de nata's courtesy of Dave, since you ask) so clearly a late arrival was on the books..

In the end we dropped the mooring about 15:45'ish, in what was clearly a building breeze, motored down the small boat channel, hoisted sail and set a course for Ryde so as to keep both sails occupied in what would have been a dead run if we'd headed straight to Portsmouth. After a gust hit us just off Ryde that had us grabbing at the coamings, and having seen a succession of high 5's and 6's (knots SOG) we finally turned and put some reefs in before entering the main boat channel for Portsmouth between the forts, gybing, and heading into the harbour on what was now a fast beam reach..

Only to be met by this as we came through the entrance..

The bookend to the day - Virgin's "Valiant Lady" leaving port - destination Amsterdam.. 

Wending our way up harbour we had a look at the moorings but it was still on the very thin side, so we turned and did a few loops, before finally chancing our arm and getting around the corner with about 20 or 30 cm's spare..

Cracking days sailing - maybe our last together for the year as well...  Rod's got a lift out end of next month (September) but Smithy's going on holiday before then..  we'll see. We do have an adventure next week, though - we're going to see the new Clipper Races boat.. 👌

Log:

Distance: 30.01 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)
Wind (Speed; Direction):  SSE going SWxS (AM) then SWxW PM) ; F4 gusting F5 (occ. F6)

Sail Plan: Full/double reefed main & full genoa
Speed (Max/average in knots):  7.2 / 2.7