22nd – 24th July
Once the sun was up, Carole made tea and then took first nap to catch up on lost sleep. The wind started to pick up a bit so we put the sails up, but to maintain a good speed we had to motor sail most of the way. Chris also managed to get his head down for a while, so by the time we arrived in Studland Bay, we were both relatively bright despite the early start.
The Bay was pretty busy already with many sailing and motor boats at anchor, but we managed to find a space and drop our anchor in the light. Following an early supper, we settled down for the night to the sounds of motor boats moving in and out of the Bay until quite late. As it got later, we both also noticed some strange noises – a bit like rice krispies having cold milk poured on them “snap, crackle and pop”. Chris got up to investigate to make sure it wasn’t electrical, but in the end we came to the conclusion that it was probably something natural in the water and so we were lulled to sleep by these sounds.
The morning brought bright, warm sunshine and after a first cup of tea, Carole donned the short wetsuit on loan from Peter and swam to shore with Chris motoring alongside in the dinghy. The water temperature has to be well in the 20’s for Chris to get wet, so at around 15 degrees there was no chance. Once ashore we checked out where the cafe and local shop were and then returned to the boat for breakfast.
Later in the day, we returned to shore for barbecue food and then managed to have our first barbecue of the year on board. It was good!
Our first two nights at anchor were a bit bumpy, so Chris decided that we should move further inshore which might make our next night more quiet. However, we had great difficulty in getting the anchor to set nearer to shore (there seemed to be an abundance of heavy weed on the bottom in every place we tried) so we ended up dropping anchor further out. Carole swam again with Chris close by in the dinghy, this time under oar power until he ran out of puff. We had a walk along the beach and enjoyed watching a motor rib towing a “banana” with 8 youngsters hanging on for dear life as it twisted and turned round the Bay at speed.
Our last night in the Bay was a tad disturbed as we weren’t 100% sure the anchor was holding as well as it should. However, we had both anchor and depth alarms set and were not surprised to be awoken at 4 am, although we seemed to be in roughly the same place and were not in danger of hitting anyone else or going aground. The next few hours went slowly as neither of us went back off to sleep.