So the weather or rather wind was looking quite nice for a trip to and stopover at Shanklin. Off the beach at the bottom of the Chine to be exact, where the Fisherman's Lodge would be open to offer an evening meal. Their friend from the Fastnet days, Jeff was also up to meet up and so a plan was set. However, it wouldn't be an early start as a night out at the Wight Proms saw my crew out watching Shappi Khorsandi and Alan Davies live on stage, but Skip new that the tide would be against us till after lunch.
And so with everything on board that should be we set off with a single reef already set and headed out of the small ship channel at or around high tide. The forecast was for strengthening winds in the afternoon and calming down later
and from the northwest, which is why they had planned to meet Jeff in
Shanklin, the wind would be coming over the island and so offered protection and dropping off for a peaceful night. Unbeknown to my crew, Jeff had taken himself around the island via the Needles on Friday night and
arrived mid-morning to anchor up and catch up on lost sleep. Skip text him
as we set off from Cowes to let him know we were on our way. Mid -Solent we were cracking
along downwind with a few fishing boats and opted to give Ryde Sands and Horse Sand Fort a large berth as slightly over sheeted Skip had to fight the helm as the crew eased the main as a near broach was foiled. As we turned around Bembridge the wind was up to 23kts
apparent and so Skip text Jeff to see what was happening around the corner 15-17kts was the answer and he could see me on AIS.
As Sandown Bay came into view that raised by a further 10kts to now 33kts and the seas started to rise to around 1.5m in height, too late to put the second reef in now. We pushed on for a while as
we knew the wind was due to drop, but it didn’t and it was too noisy to listen to
any weather updates from the Coast Guard nor wishing to leave station and check
the phone for updates.
We had Speed Oer Ground of 3.5kts as was the action of
the choppy waves with wind over tide, although Marine Traffic had me at 6.0kts most of the time. Decision time do they tack and headed into the Bay and waited to see if the wind and
waves eased the further in we went, but they opted to turn turtle and retrace our
path. 9-10.0kts surfing down waves and passing a yacht under engine was possibly more exciting than it should be. Once past Bembridge, the sea state lightened up a little and eventually passing
Osbourne the wind did too. With the reef still in but full jib rolled out we had
a cracking sail back.
With low water springs and approaching
low tide, not quite the best time to cross the chain links path, who was being
pushed by the Kingstone Marine boat at the time due to the strong current, the crew waited for them to cross
over and proceeded to pass as wide as we could without running aground on the
Eastside. The working boat at that point looked to be repositioning
himself, but was not, it was a job and finish and pulled across us, so we spun round
as so as not to be pushed further East. As we approached again another
yacht was coming directly at us from the downstream, we spun again and Skip had to
use a lot of horses to stop us from being affected by the speed of the tide and the
bow thruster of the Red Funnel car ferry that was parking. Finally, we got over the
chains and headed home.
It was an interesting day full of incidents and situations, Jeff having watch us turn round opted to head back to Gosport.
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