Scuttlebutt Solent to Poole Novice Cruise - Spring 2012

[Chrissie]

hello all, Charlie dog and I had a great time, we stayed at Yarmouth till the Monday, and sailed back in the rain, but a great sail close hauled to Gosport, reefs in and out, and with the tide touching 8.5kn when well reefed.
It was really nice meeting you all, and Im up for round two, Chrissie

[semisimple]

Ah shame your Poole trip didn't go ahead, we went from Portsmouth to Poole on the Saturday...left at 11 and were there by 5 with the tide whipping us along, we were looking out for a ybw crowd. Obviously we paid for the quick trip with a horrid long slog to Yarmouth on Sunday, but didn't find any berths and ended up in Lymington.

Weather was actually surprisingly good, so thank you to everyone who posted in this thread! We decided to sail late on Friday and this thread was incredibly useful for planning.

[Simondjuk]

Also now back home after an "exhilarating" trip from Gosport to Southsea to say the least! I am seriously considering renaming Booby to "DasUnterseeBoot" as she seems to have a penchant for being under the waves rather than on top of them. However she did us proud for such a little 'un.

Had a couple of dramas leaving Pompy namely a bunch of weed round the prop reducing forward motion and then a "man overboard" situation from the St Helen IOW car ferry at the junction of the Swashway and the main channel. Luckily my colleagues from the Harbour Patrol, the MODPol launches and the Pilot Boats did a great job of finding and retrieving the MOB so our expertise was not required.

Last time I entered Langstone on the spring ebb with a southerly "breeze" blowing I was at the helm of a 6m RIB with a 115HP engine but my little boat & 6HP coped very well if you exclude the couple of 360 degree pirouettes!

As has already been said by others, very many thanks indeed to Ru88ell and PhillM for putting the event together and indeed everyone else for making the weekend so enjoyable.

Also thanks to LustyD and Simonjuk for their tips and advice of several aspects of boating and I am very much looking forward to the inaugural S'butt "Deliberately Taking The Ground For The First Time" event which has been mooted together with the S'butt Cruising Chute Training Weekend.

I've been trying to reply to your email tonight but have been unable to as it seems someone has broken Hotmail. Will do so when they fix it.

As regards the drying out session (just the boat, not the occupants!), the next two or three weekends are probably out for us due to our move. After that, any weekend where there's not likely to be much north in the wind, which can lead to a slightly bumpy touchdown, will do for a beaching at East Head. The only decision to be made is whether to make it a brief stop, taking the ground shortly before low water and re-floating early in the flood, or a long one, drying shortly after high water and re-floating nearly 12 hours later. The former is good in the day as it allows some sailing either side, the latter best suited in the evening for an overnight stop on the beach.

The cruising chute session is slightly more dependent on the wind strength, although not needing to go from A to B means that the direction is at least irrelevant since we can go in any direction that suits.

Looking forward to both, hopefully sooner rather than later if we can get the trivia of house moves done and dusted quick smart to make way for the important stuff like sailing.

[Simondjuk]

Still waiting to read about the "tack away" incident.

I keep starting to write it then thinking that perhaps it's a little churlish to do so given that an apology was forthcoming, even if it may only have been so under threat of penalty, punishment, disgrace and disqualification. Still mulling it over.

[Ru88ell]

More pics added to the Photobucket account. Pub shots though.

[lustyd]

I just uploaded a few more pics to photobucket.
Cheers
Dave

[Simondjuk]

Sorry we didn't take more pics on the Portsmouth to Chichester hop. This was due to me leaning on the tiller handle and breaking it off at the root whilst we were hove to. It had been previously repaired in an invisible but not very strong manner which I'd not discovered during the refit. Fortunately we had a spare, but digging it out and fitting it was a bit of a distraction. The spare handle wasn't terribly confidence inspiring, hence why we then cracked on a bit with the minimum of tacking.

Even worse, it seems the few pics I did take are pretty mushy due to camera inadvertently having been set to spot focus mode.

[moodyNick]

More pics added to the Photobucket account. Pub shots though.

Would be great if the rest of us could see the piccies too

[lustyd]

Would be great if the rest of us could see the piccies too

What happened on the trip, stays on the trip

[prv]

What happened on the trip, stays on the trip

That makes it sound far more exciting than what the pictures actually show

Pete