It's been a few years since we added to the Blog and in that time we have been sailing locally to the lovely East Coast rivers, Holland, France, Channel Islands & Belgium. So it's time to get going again and try to get to Portugal.

We signed up for the World Cruising Club ARC Portugal rally which so far has really focussed us (me) to get things done on the boat for an ocean crossing. Heavy weather sails, light weather sails, additional safety gear that had gone out of date, overhaul the steering system.

One job that has needed doing for a couple of years was to get the standing rigging replaced so that's now done, I have added an insulated back stay as I have a HF radio that I may fit if we decide to go further than Portugal.

I have added the Hydrovane (like an auto pilot) so this should take the hard work out of steering and not use any power. We are yet to "learn" how to use it.

Our initial plan was to get everything done and go for a few shakedown sails but this didn't happen, our list of things to do grew instead of shorten, in the end we decided that we should just get going and test all the new stuff on the way.

So on the 16/05/15 we left Titchmarsh. It was sad to go and say goodbye to our friends that we had made Ian and Linda, John and Linda and everybody we have met there. We shall miss sailing in their company...such good times. Also thanks to Steve the harbourmaster and all of his team. They make this marina so good and friendly.

We untied at about 12:30 with a plan to get to Eastbourne, however the forecast was W or NW F5-6 as we motored up the twizzle and it was blowing 26 knts.
My initial plan was to sail outside all the sand banks but in the end it was easier to take the Black deep channel and out through Fishermans gat. During the day the wind died so much so that we had the engine on by the time we got to Fishermans Gat and we motor sailed for some time.

We carried the tide as far as South Foreland when it turned against us. This meant bucking the tide past Dover Harbour at about 3knts in the dark. I hate being a sitting target for the ferries but we got past without any incident.

As the night went on, the wind picked up to a nice F4 from the NW. It always seems you are sailing so fast in the dark but we were only doing 6kts in a flat sea on a clear but really cold night. It was so nice to come off watch and into a warm sleeping bag. We were doing about 2 on and 2 off through the night hours. At about 06:30 the wind died again and backed to the west so on with the engine again. We then motored to Eastbourne where we got in at about 09:00

We are here for today (Monday 18th) and I think tomorrow looking at the forecast. Then we hope to do a long sail towards Dartmouth or Plymouth.....We shall see.

Bye for now.