Well, we spent a lovely night at anchor off Chalkdock Point, Chichester - despite my dreams of coming adrift and ending up in a shopping centre, we were not going anywhere. When we came to leave in the morning we had to break the anchor out with the engine - a job well done in my book! Not so much fun was the acres and acres of weed... the mud got thoroughly cleaned off - but you'll find that out later...

After a particular 'adventure' with the CQR last year, we fitted a 15kg Rocna, to which we added 50m of 10mm chain and 50m of octoplait (navy, for no particular reason - maybe it was cheaper). The anchor's shape, combined with our bowsprit required a few alterations to the anchor roller setup which I'll get round to detailing a bit later.

So, we rose bright and early (5am!) to get out of Chichester before low water, but try to catch as much of the east-going tide as possible, heading as my logbook entry says, "towards Brighton/Newhaven/Seaford Roads". I'm not much of a traditionalist in other matters, but stating an outright destination as 'to' in your log always seems to be tempting fate on a sailing boat...

We had a good run down to the Looe Channel, 1 reef in the main, full staysail, new "small" (i.e. working) jib. Suited the NE F4 beautifully, and as it was a lovely sunny day, we were enjoying ourselves just fine on a bit of a reach. As we came through the Looe, the breeze freshened to about a 6 and since we were going to have to come hard on the wind to head east, I called for the 2nd reef in the main. Well, by that I mean we hove to and I went up and put it in - but it sounds better the first way ;-).

This is the point where it became a little more uncomfortable - we can't really argue with a spring tide, so in going with it we were wind over tide in some fairly shallow water and we had a short chop that put me in mind of the North Sea - though with greeny-blue water instead of murky grey-brown. With leeway we were not tracking a great deal better than 60 degrees off our course on each tack, which is a bit dishearting. However, we made a very good discovery, which is that Molly will steer herself very well indeed when close hauled, guiding herself over the waves like the very best of helms(wo)men [and I am a pretty good helm upwind, so that's genuine praise for the boat's abilities]. Now, if only the windvane (which we hadn't put it on) can do as well for us off the wind...

Perhaps to balance out this good fortune, we also made a rather less good discovery - my trip to the loo revealed that the sink seacock had been incompletely closed and had siphoned/overflowed - cue some work with the saucepan to bail it out and check that it wasn't something more serious like one of the bronze seacocks.. Eventually I even got to have my pee! I also shut the galley sink seacock in case that cused us issues when we went about. That wasn't the end of it though, as an hour or so later I noticed that there was still water sloshing around, this time in the main cabin, which has never happened before. I asked Steven to pump the bilge pump but nothing much seemed to result from his efforts, so I thought maybe it was just left over from the heads sink. Later, I concluded that we were heeled too far for the pickup and thought about another heave to to level us off and sort it - but by that time the damage was done and we were nearly there.

I should perhaps point out that we were taking alot of water over the deck, over the cabin top, over my head.... (and the occasional splashback over the quarter). Probably too much sail up, but we felt we needed it to punch through the waves, and the helm was certainly well-balanced, since we were not even touching it! Steven, on his trip to the loo, discovered that water was "peeing in" through the forehatch. He didn't get his pee .... there were later contortions in the cockpit. Everything has its bright side though. Score one for XM oliles over Mustos (on the latter the zip on the dungarees goes right down but the flap doesn't... you'd have to be the start of some (ahem!) specialist films to manage to get it out over that. The XMs are better organised).

To cut a long day short, after more tacking, losing the favourable tide, nearly losing the bigger jib (lashed to the foredeck-now put on top of the hard dinghy) finding (to my suprise) that we can't point any higher with the engine on (we just get faster and wetter!) and some deft and timely use of the Mark 1 eyeball to counteract the slight GPS waypoint entry error of the night before (note: Brighton is still W) we pulled into Brighton and got a spot for the night. Shame it had only one bollard and one cleat - OK for a std bow-stern tie up but not our usual(easy) short spring landing. Still, we managed to haul her properly into the space and start to survey the sogginess....

I will get back to our anchor setup, honest!