Saturday morning saw us chugging out of Poole Harbour - the sea was glassy and the wind indicator was struggling to read anything above 3knots of true wind - not even enough for the big sail! So in temperatures more usually found in the Caribbean and no wind at all we chugged along the coast towards the Needles channel. As usual with these relatively narrow seaways our arrival needed to be timed to ensure that the tide would take us with it through the gap between mainland and island rather than try and push us back out to sea - a battle we would find difficult to win! By lunchtime we were passing the Needles still in no wind and with the motor chugging away, but we had arrived in the most popular and populous sailing ground in the UK - the Solent!
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Passing The Needles
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After so long sailing as either the only visible boat or at best with half a dozen or so other boats visible to us the shock of the Solent on a Saturday lunchtime was huge! All we could see for miles were hundreds of masts and sails! The skipper negotiated a passage through at least two racing fleets whilst I managed to secure a berth for us in Lymington - not an easy task - in this neck of the woods the name of the game is to pre-book berths early or be prepared to tie up alongside other boats and climb over them to get ashore and be prepared to have others tie up to you and climb over you! Anchoring anywhere is difficult because of the sheer number of boats about and most of the overnight rivers and inlets are already conjested with moorings.
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| A racing fleet coming up behind! |
The following morning we left Lymington heading for Portsmouth, an easy commute for our daughter back to London, with the intention of spending a night in Portsmouth and then turning back and spending the next few days exploring the Isle of Wight and the Solent. Again the whole area was congested with racing fleets and it was difficult to sail through them but we did and arrived in Portsmouth in time for a ride on the Gosport ferry and a visit to the shops in Gunwharf Quay.
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| Approaching Portsmouth |
As we left Portsmouth on Monday morning we were a little concerned at just how busy it would be but clearly racing is very much a weekend activity here and although there were more boats around than we had seen for a while it was nowhere near as busy as it had been.
As I write this we are now sitting in Port Hamble Marina on the River Hamble with the wind howling through the rigging - this is the weekend when the heatwave "broke" and we have seen thunderstorms and rain and now have a predicted gale blowing through for the weekend - although there is a promise of the dry warm weather returning next week and the wind is due to die back to a F5 gusting 6 overnight on Sunday and back down to a pleasant F4 gusting 5 on Monday morning.
Our week has been great we have visited Cowes the "home" of English yachting and Yarmouth (IoW) where we spent a couple of memorable holidays with our children when they were small in a holiday camp! For me the best bit was a drift up the Beaulieu River to Bucklers Hard where we spent a lovely couple of days in the sunshine. We walked along the river to Beaulieu village for locally made ice -cream (which was delicious) and spent some time in Bucklers Hard Museum learning the history of this fascinating place.
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| Sunset over the Beaulieu River |
Sadly the most disappointing spot for both of us has been the Hamble river - it really is just a giant boat parking lot with huge marinas lining the north bank of the river and pontoon and other moorings on the south side leaving a narrow channel for boats to motor along to get out into Southmpton Water. Perhaps naively we were expecting something closer to our beloved East Coast Rivers with space to sail or anchor and to admire the scenery!
From here our plan is to head back to Gosport on Monday and then carry on along the South Coast towards Dover and then finally home probably by mid/late August - but more of that later!
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