Shake Down Sail
06 August 2013 | Cowes,Yarmouth, Poole,Lymington,Hamble UK
Stu & Shar
Shake Down Sail - Cowes, Yarmouth, Poole, Lymington, Hamble
Cowes
As we headed out for our very first sail - the "shakedown" sail, the wind blew up a bit more than forecast....funny that :o).... Shar was not impressed.....33kts as we powered the short trip across to Cowes, first water across the decks....uuummm the cockpit hatches don't seal to well will need to look at that. Yachts, power boats, Red Funnel ferries flying everywhere outside marked channels, they were heading in all directions. There didn't seem to be any pattern in the movement so we just went our way. We dodged a couple of the ferries and passed behind a large tanker (close enough to be moved about by the wash) just outside the exclusion zone at the bottom of the Southampton Waters. This is the area where it meets the Solent near Bramble Bank (the ferries were crossing this Bramble Bank?...local knowledge I guess). Quite a lively sail for first day out, pulled into Cowes with quite a noticeable cross flow on the tide, glad I opted for the upgrade to 55hp, I can see this will have benefits. Tied up in Cowes with no problem, where everyone was madly organising the place for the infamous "Cowes Week" which was due to start in a couple of days. The works boys at Freo would have a heart attack at where the lifters were being driven to move around boats (see photos), It was amazing to see how skilled these guys were at squeezing boats into very tight places. Had a look around Cowes, picked up some stuff from the local chandlery and downed another cream tea (well, its not long before they wont be an option). On the upstream edge of town is an old chain ferry which apparently is one of the last 5 operating in the UK and Ireland, we went across into East Cowes which is the ferry port and industrial side of town. Back into Cowes and Shar went shopping to do a bit of retail therapy, so I got a haircut as spiny norman had come back to visit.
Yarmouth
A champagne sailing day on the Solent, beautiful weather, with a light breeze to start. We sailed out through "The Trap" and up to the Needles Lighthouse as the breeze increased to just over 20kts, turned on a reciprocal heading and came back in on an incoming tide. The upwellings of water around "The Trap" entrance as the tide pressed its way over rock ledges into the Solent, were quite significant, these buffeted Songbird as we went through them. They made your heart race a bit and check the chart more than once, as you think did I miss a rock on the chart !! Pulling into Yarmouth with a ferry hard on your tail put the pressure on, as its quite a tight harbour. We got there just after 16:00 which we were soon to find out is peak hour for most harbours. This was our introduction to a "rafting" UK style...pack them 4 deep and then have 6 drunken guys stumble and bang their way across your new boat....seriously not impressed...but this is the accepted norm, put up with it. The Harbour master nudged us in with his dinghy and said I polish my boat to much as he slipped and slid along the side...I said I havent polished it, its brand new, he got us parked and bolted. The key seems to be do everything slowly and throw in plenty of fenders. Brian and Penny on Destiny were a great help and showed us the way to go, we had a few drinks with them at the Royal Yarmouth Yacht Club along with a couple of guys who had a wooden "folk boat", this had a freeboard of about 18 inches, scary stuff for waters around here.
Poole
Up early as the guys inside us wanted to catch the tide and head across to France. So we sorted ourselves out and made our way across to Poole. Wind was a steady 18-20kts on a very close haul good day to test how well she pointed and test a few of the systems we installed. I put a reef in the main and put out about 80% headsail, as Shar wasnt keen on driving to hard. It was a grey day with patches of drizzle and a bit of reduced visibility, total contrast to the day before. She plonked along about 6 to 6.5knots on an apparent angle of 30 degrees, if I bore away 5 degrees she kicked up to about 7-7.5 knots in a 1 meter chop, cant complain about that. One thing that was familiar is dodging craypots (or lobster pots), at least the lines are kept tight and the pick up buoy is on a short tether, which made passing them easier. We sailed up the channel past Studland Bay (which apparently is supposed to be the most expensive real estate in the UK), past the chain ferry and dropped sail at Brownsea Island, before negotiating a tight channel into Parkstone Yacht Club. We spent a couple of nights in Poole and walked the couple of miles into town. We wandered into the local museum for a look. Now a lot of fuss is made over the "Mary Rose" in Portsmouth which is 400 years old, but Poole has a wooden "Long Boat" dating back to 200-300 BC, which made it over 2300 years old. They had preserved it with sugar !! ....now this was impressive. It was also the base for "Operation Overlord" in WWII which sent 300 boats across for the Normandy invasion of German occupied France on D-Day.
Lymington
We left Poole and started to make our way back towards Hamble. We were working our way against the tide today, but had a following wind. We made good time over water but lost about 2 knots going backward against an outgoing tide. This proved evident in the log as the trip to Poole going with the tide was 23.1nm and the return to Lymington (which is spitting distance from Yarmouth) was 31.9nm, all interesting stuff, as everyone says its all about the tides. As we pulled into Lymington Yacht Haven they allocated us a berth, which turned out to be way too small. They penny should have dropped when we motored between "D" and "G" pontoon. After missing an anchor by millimetres and T-boning the end of the pontoon (lucky Songbird has a serious bow protector), I managed to work my way out without damage. After a rather terse conversation with the harbour master on the radio, we moved to another berth.
In Lymington we met a local legend "Les Powles" who has completed three circumnavigations of our planet in his yacht "Solitaire". Bill Burbidge met Les back in 1993, when Les sailed into Carnarvon looking a bit worse for wear after a rather arduous crossing of the Indian Ocean. Bill asked me to look him up as he has stopped communicating with him a year or two ago and was concerned about him. We asked the people in the Marina office if they knew of Les and the reply was "look behind you", there he was collecting his mail. We spent a couple of hours talking to Les and found him in pretty good spirits. He is 87 now and attempted another circumnavigation at 80, but got beaten back by a storm in the Bay of Biscay, he had to turn back after trying to beat into it for 5 days...unbelievable. He signed one of his original books for us, a treasure we will keep forever. He still lives on Solitaire and is quite content with living this way. Solitaire is looking in pretty bad shape and could do with some serious TLC. We offered to help Les but he said he is happy with things the way they are, so we let it be.....a true sailing Legend...on his first circumnavigation, he started out with only 8 days sailing experience.
Hamble
We left Lymington very early to be back in Hamble for 8:30. It was a beautiful crisp clear morning with no wind. We made it back to Hamble at 8:15 on an incoming tide, ready for the shipwright to start work and finish off the final bits of the commissioning. We then will be moving west for a couple of days to take advantage of the predominant SW winds to cross the channel on hopefully a broad reach.