Following a brief outing last time in which I took my crew up to Horse Sands Fort at speed. The second May bank holiday has just past and so it was on the Sunday my skipper and crew complete with provisions arrived.
Two new pulleys have arrived and have been fitted to the D rings that have the safety line attached. They both have some elastic looping over the top safety wire to stop them bashing the deck. They have been added as it sounds as though I'm soon going to have a new sail, a G2 Genakker complete with a snuffler. This will be my down wind sail and be able to be de-powered by pulling a huge 'sock' over it by one of the crew, whilst the other remains on the helm.
With the conversation about it deminishing, I was prepared and the lines slipped. There were a vast number of yacht out in the Solent, racing, cruising or just visiting. My nose was tipped to the east and once clear, the main was hoisted shortly followed by the jib. With the tide and on a broad reach I soon hit 8.0 knots. Within an hour I was at the Forts again but this time continued east, in fact we reached the entrance to Chichester harbour but time was against us as high tide was fast approaching. My skipper was unhappy of the possibility that I could find myself not only punching the ebbing tide out of the channel but with the wind around 15 knots, making manoeuvring difficult when finding a visitors buoy amongst other yachts on their swinging moorings.
I bore round and headed back west. My skipper kept a careful eye a stern on a small container vessel that was entering the main shipping channel. In fact he tact over to show clearly that not only had we seen him but was keeping out of his way. This new bearing took me towards the Wight Link ferry from Wotton Creek or Fishbourne as its otherwise known. After a few minutes I was tact again back on the original bearing, again showing the ferry awareness. This new bearing brought me close to the freighter once more, but by know the pilot was aware of what my skipper was doing and a visual check out of the bridge side window and an acknowledgement wave, proved the point as soon as he'd passed I went across his stern, as the previous bearing was compromising me with wind angle. The crew on board the freighter clearly found this amusing as camera's came out and they stood at the stern taking photo's of me. Travelling at around 7.0 knots, I headed up the main channel until Osborne House was on my port side, then I turned and headed across towards the bay. This had me crossing in front of a cruise liner, but my skipper had judged this one to perfection and I was leaving the channel on the other side we before the liner was upon us.
Rounding up in to the wind the main de-powered and the engine was on. With sails down I was taken further east of the Bay than usual and anchored.
With 20m of chain out and the wind building, my crew retired for the evening. At around 0230 my anchor alarm sounded and my skipper was soon at the GPS to see what was happening. Simple really the setting of 30.0m radius on the alarm was just not enough, being 14m, the combination of chain and the location of my GPS antenna took me 4.0m beyond the range and so the alarm kicked in. I was surprised at how quickly the skipper had realised this in the middle of the night and he reset the distance. Mind you he does lie there listening to all my noises and reacts accordingly or not.
In the morning the Solent was flat calm and the skipper emerged after breakfast and stripped down my starboard side Harkenen 46 winch, that was stiff, this usually takes the jib sheet. Once done and re-assembled I was back on my way to my pontoon.
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