The only way to show that you are a hardened sailor is to scrape the ice off before you set out, that the inshore forecast in the area that you wish to sail in has plenty of red round the outline of the UK, and if possible, large areas of the country are also filled-in in red.
Well, that’s how it was on 10 December – almost – I embellished a bit – the fill-in was a delicate shade of green, the red was the week before. The ice was there, so was the red outline around the coast.
Three boats went out, Tern IV (Najad 331 with tiller steering) skippered by Phil, Ariam (Maxi 34) skippered by Gill, both from Hamble Point Yacht Charters, and David Mark skippering his Camena (Hallberg-Rassy 36).
Phil and crew of Victor and Nanae went out on Saturday and Melinda joined them for the day sail. I thought it was only the cars that needed scraping, did I hear right that Phil said their jetty was also icebound in the morning? Gill took Bob, Robert and Lyn, while David took Sandy, Avi, and Michael.
We set off just gone 10 and motored out into a “stiff breeze” that very quickly turned into a two reefs and shortened jib job, tacking across to Cowes and making very little headway against the tide. Fawley refinery chimney kept on being at the same point of sail sort of ahead of us the whole time, it should have been behind us. By this time the wind was picking up a bit, the spray was coming up a bit, but we were dry in our wet weather garb rented from the marina at a little over the price of a pint. Partway over Gill put the engine on and we motor sailed to Cowes else we would have had our lunch at sundown.
An advantage of sailing at this time of the year is that the harbour in Cowes is empty, and we had our pick of pontoons in the marina. Beware of the seagull droppings when stepping onto the pontoons with the lines!
Once firmly tied up, bow and stern with springs, to the important things in life – what is the code for the heads in the clubhouse? It’s the cold weather, you know.
Depending on which boat you were on, lunch comprised sandwiches, homemade soup, or fish and chips freshly purchased on-shore. Sandy treated us to her mulled wine, plus mince pies plus doughnuts on the luxury of David’s Camena.
Before we knew it, it was time to set sail for Hamble Point under a darkening sky and a wind blowing us off the pontoon and the others on to it because they were moored on the other side.
As we motored out from the shelter of the harbour the breaking crests were visible to the west, and there seemed to be a distinct lack of other sailing boats irrespective of size. In fact, there weren’t any sailing boats in the vicinity except for a twin-masted ketch sailing into Cowes as we were sailing out. We set sail under jib only – at 7½ knots.
Partway back it started to rain, and after a few tacks and a bit of motoring we were back in Hamble Point by 16h00, all packed, paid up, through the bar for a hot chocolate, tea and coffee, and we left for home at just gone 4-30.
What a pain driving back up the M3 is on a Sunday night with all those other motorists clogging up the roads.
Cracking sail, must do that again.
