Yacht Seaduction 2023

16^th June Thursday

Passage planning for sailing is always difficult.  You need to take into account many factors: wind, tide at departure and arrival, is there enough water when we arrive, etc etc.  I had made my plan to leave Brighton and I was happy that it was right.  Then I was talking to other sailors who were also heading the same way as us.  One said that he was leaving at 4am another 11am and one at 7am.  Quite disconcerting, so I rechecked all my calculations and continued my plan to leave at 7am. Job done!

As the wind had not dropped since we got to Brighton we could not turn the boat around to face out, as originally hoped, so Carole and I talked about our options (Chris did most of the talking) as the wind was still pushing us onto the pontoon with other boats front and back.  The good thing was, the plan worked and we departed without bashing anyone.  Soon Carole had put all the fenders away and we left the marina.   As soon as we were out we put the sails up with a small reef in the main and genoa and turned to starboard for Selsey Bill.  The wind was F4 and we were sailing between 6.5 -7.5 knt.  We could also see the 4 other yachts which had also left Brighton.  They must have decided that our departure time was the best!

We could see the dark clouds closing in and soon the rain started and became heavy.  The visibility reduced to about 200 mtrs.  This continued for about an hour but sensibly we both kept dry under our canopy and left the auto helm to do its job steering the boat.  We chose to go through the Looe Chanel which is a small passage off Selsey Bill between two sets of shallow rocks. This passage is about 50 metres wide. We found the two buoys marking the channel and went through safely. This saved us about two hours’ sailing.  We could now see the Isle of White in the distance.  The wind had dropped slightly and we were now making about 6knts.  We checked all the buoys as we passed them and soon we were approaching the entrance to Portsmouth, so sails away and engine on.  We radioed into Haslar Marina for a berth on ch80. Once we arrived we found our berth and tied up without problem, despite the fact that a strong tide was running through the pontoons. We were then met by a berthing assistant who directed us to the office just one-third of a mile away along the pontoons. We shall certainly earn our supper tonight, with a table booked at the rather splendid looking restaurant on the Mary Mouse II lightship.