Portsmouth to Brighton

A sad goodbye to the Solent this morning; we've had a lot of fun both on the way out and back - 7 different locations in total, pretty much all the ones available to us who don't 'dry out' (apart from Southampton and Hamble ... and why would you).

Yesterday we filled up with diesel at Gosport on arrival - only the second time this whole trip, which shows how much sailing we have done compared to last year's trip.

Portsmouth is very busy with commercial and ferry traffic, even as we left at 0630.  A few pics give an idea.

Portsmouth skyline feature the Spinnaker Tower, ferry in foreground

The wind was SSW F3 all day - a little less than forecast, and a little less than we would have liked.  Wind & waves on the quarter makes for very rolling progress, and if the wind is less than 10kn apparent (i.e. as measured on the boat) the sails sometimes 'fall in' (flap) as we roll which is annoying.  We had a lot of 9kn wind ... and did a lot of whistling for more, to no avail.  We experimented with having a double-reefed mainsail (as well as full genoa), because we thought it would provide extra push and some stability without stealing the wind from the genoa ... later we took down the mainsail and it didn't seem to make any difference.  Shan't bother with that again.

We went through the Looe Channel, a coastal route past Selsey Bill, and there were confused, breaking waves due to the tide flow - this was a gentle tide with wind, so we wouldn't go there if tide against wind or wind > F4.  We did shoot through the channel at 7.5kn.  Then the 27nm slog across to Brighton - I say slog, because the rolling meant that helming was hard work to keep her on course.  Mustn't grumble though because we did sail all the way, and we didn't get rained on once - in fact it was often sunny.

We were both a bit grumpy today though, and we put it down to being on the homeward stretch.  Not that we don't want to go home - there's lots to look forward to there.  It's just perhaps that we're now going into ports because we have to, rather than because we want to ... sorry, Brighton!