Brighton to Portsmouth - Warship special (19 May)

Brighton provided our first experience of swanky south-coast toilets & showers; each cubicle is a bathroom with shower, toilet and washbasin and they have a set between mens and ladies that can be used by both together.  Almost 5-star except they still haven't designed them to stop the whole floor getting wet.  Showers and tides ... subjects on which we have so much more to say ... but moving on, as we did at high noon.

chart table on passage, maps & logs

A long straight leg of 27 miles to Selsey Bill afforded us a beautiful broad reach/run with genoa only before a F3-4 ESE and a 1m swell that had us rolling merrily.  Except we weren't quite so merry, at first as we found our sea legs (have had flat calm for 3 days before), and then later as the genoa kept collapsing during extreme rolls.  Improved things by re-routing the genoa sheets, but regretting that we have not solved the whisker/spinnaker pole conundrum yet, nor have we found the time to understand and practice using our cruising chute.  All in good time.  We were very appreciative though that finally we had a good long day of down-wind sailing, and overall on the day we averaged almost 6kn (some tide against and some with, so you might say, roughly, that was water speed).  Incidentally, we worked out that when motoring in a calm seaway she does 5kn at 1500rpm which is very economical on fuel.  I think her slippery bottom (newly anti-fouled) helps.  Too technical?  We think not.

HMS Bulwark leaving The Solent

Don't look now, it's the Navy

W33 - chasing us ... or passing us?

We took the Looe Channel past Selsey Bill, which is shallow and narrow and a good short cut, and then across to Horse Sands Fort (motor on and sail furl here) and then follow the edge of the shipping channel into Portsmouth, crossing over to the 'wrong' side for entry as that's what they require.  We saw HMS Bulwark coming out, the Navy's largest and the one stationed at Greenwich during the Olympics, and a smaller navy ship ('W33' - a frigate?) came past then stalked us from behind before steaming past towards Cowes.

We dropped into Haslar Marina which is conveniently first on the left, on the Gosport side, and moored with no fuss onto a visitor pontoon.  It was 2050, and a quick check with the Marina office suggested the restaurant in the beautiful lightship at the marina entrance stopped serving at 2100.  A very quick tidy up (of the boat, not us) had us there at 2105 and the wonderful Maria happily took our order.  All food tastes fabulous after a long passage, yet this was even better than that - and there was time for a pudding.  Which explains why this blog was written not that night but on the following day.  Zzzzzz.

Blazing sun and Beachy Head

Dover harbour, castle on hill

Big contrast to last year's hairy chillsome sailing - hot weather and no wind! Leaving Dover, we motor-sailed into a mill-pond, and conditions got hotter as the day progressed.


There was early mist and haze which hid the grey bulk of Dungeness nuclear power station
 until we were close by.

Lesley saw two fins about 300m behind us for a couple of minutes - we can't say what they were.

We were heading for Eastbourne but as we neared the town, with tide flowing in our favour, we realised the tide & weather were right to keep on going all the way to Brighton. 

Beachy Head

These were ideal conditions to round Beachy Head, which is tricky in rough weather. So we ventured in pretty close for a superb view of the towering cliffs.

Kept chugging down the coast on the 10-metre depth contour, until we arrived in Brighton after 11 hours and 65 miles, jockeying with legions of Sunday sailors in huge shiny yachts and even huger motorboats which sounded their air-horns just for fun.




We rarely sit about and drink alcohol (no time) but today we lounged in the cockpit with whisky and Campari to celebrate a long leg. Down the hatch.