Here I find myself in Weymouth, sat alone in a pub, contributing to the local economy and blogging. Its free wi-fi – so long as I sit with a pint, which as I’m sure you will agree, is a real hardship in itself!
John and I are both knackered, its been a long but successful day, sailing from Cowes to Weymouth. We are very lucky with the weather, because it has not only been gloriously sunny, probably in the top ten warmest days of the year, but there has been a beautiful south easterly breeze so we have been able to sail too!
We spent time planning our passage yesterday, not working so much as individual skippers, but working as a team, which you can when you are both at the same level and there are only 2 of you. I brought the boat off the pontoon at Cowes, and did a little lap and re-berthed, with a successful first attempt – just for a bit of practice before we left.
We knew there were potential problems as you pass the needles, and we made sure our timing was correct. The needles looked glorious as we passed them by,
and once we were on our way across towards St Albans Head, we allowed ourselves to relax a little and enjoy a spot of lunch in the sun.
Lunch and the sun made me a little sleepy, so I brought up a pillow and lay down in the cockpit and slumbered a little. John doesnt find it easy to sit still, and I think he welcomed the time to himself to potter around the boat, adjusting lines and generally fiddling around. I don’t have a problem with this at all, until he gets in the way of the sun and casts a shadow across me!
This months Yachting Monthly has a feature by Tom Cunliffe about famous headlands around Britain and writes about St Albans Head, and he speaks about how beautiful it is, and it would be such a shame not to pass it by really closely if you can, then he recounts a tale of how he had one of his worse journeys around there when he got it wrong – thanks Tom! We decided to give it a wide berth, but were very impressed by the beauty of the landscape all the same.
I discovered why the buoys we were navigating to were called “DZ – A, B and C” as DZ stands for “Danger Zone – this is because large sections of the Dorset countryside are in the hands of the MoD, and we were entering a firing range. We knew we were allowed to sail in there, but aware there might be warnings for us to leave. Would you just know, a boat blasted out of no where and asked us very politely to maintain a course of 270 degrees until we had Lulworth Cove on our beam.
The Range Boat comes alongside to send us on our way!
Then it sits and waits for other victims!
We had the sails set beautifully for our point of sail and this still allowed the sun to shine in the cockpit, until we changed course! Never mind, the Cove some came along, we were hardly in their zone – but who wants to run the risk of being fired at?
John takes a slumber too!
We had a beautiful sail, and furled in our sails on our approach to Weymouth harbour. A quick call to the harbour and we were told we could berth on the visitors pontoon, onto a boat with our starboard side to.
My turn to maneuver the boat today and I brought the boat safely into the harbour and we looked out for our mooring. I tried to bring the boat starboard side onto the boat, and felt very anxious about moving close to a £250,000 boat with the owners watching me, and the wind behind me…….!
A lesson learned, just because the harbour master asks you to go starboard side on, if this means it makes it tons more difficult, you can alter the plan a little, so I turned her around, John reset the fenders and lines onto the port side, and much to our new neighbours relief, brought the boat alongside whilst gently heading into the wind – so much easier!
Its so much less stressful to bring the boat onto a wooden pontoon rather than onto someones pride and joy – while they are looking!
Relieved that we had a very successful trip, albeit a little stressful during the last 10 minutes, we treated ourselves to an early evening drink as the last few minutes of hot sun hung in the sky.
On the Round Britain Experience, if you have been skipper for the day and worked hard, you could relax after as it was someone elses turn tomorrow – not on Nashira, as planning for tomorrow ensued immediately!
We planned our journey tomorrow to Brixham, taking us round Portland Bill, a notoriously dangerous place for boats with strong currents and overfalls. We have paid extra care as we planned our route, and have devised a series of way points. We were getting tired and hungry by this point, and as I volunteered to enter the way points into our chart plotter, John gave a sigh of relief.
I’ve inputted all the waypoints for our journey to Brixham tomorrow and created a route which we have creatively named wey to brix”! John was most impressed by my skill at programming the chart plotter, and I love how easy it is, as a gadget geek, to impress technophobes!
A quick visit to the chippy – fish chips, and, for the northerner (me) curry sauce. John continued to regale me with his tales as we eat, then looked surprised as he saw my plate was cleared – he had been doing all the talking, and I did what I am good at – eating!
John, being a farmer, is used to early nights and very early mornings, so he likes to be in bed 9-9.30, so he is in slumber as I sit here in The Ship Inn, Weymouth drinking beer and blogging!
A successful day today, and my tan is glowing as I think of tomorrow and our next journey. This really is a period of consolidation, and I am putting into practice all I have learned, and realise I know more than I have given myself credit for, but painfully aware of the work I still have to prepare for my yacht master exam in 10 days time…….time for bed I think. Goodnight!
