2023 April 16th Day 2 - Portland to Churston Cove

A day after a neap tide the tidal gate around the Bill opened at 08:14 so daylight was not going to be a problem, on the other hand a late start would probably mean a late arrival. I weighed anchor at 06:15 and in calm conditions and with a reasonably clean hull I arrived half an hour early but in benign conditions and so close to the neap tide I went round early with no problems.

Last year I commented that there always seems to be fishermen
at the harbour entrance, this time it was a couple of guys fishing
from kayaks

The North Breakwater.

I always have to avoid pot buoys going round the Bill, this
time I had to avoid the Lobster boat as well.

My track around the Bill, 128 yards off and being
early I went a bit further north than I normally go
coming out. The "kink" further west was me avoiding
a pot a marker and getting the mainsail up.
(Tide indicators from when I took the screenshot
not when I went round)

The wind which had been close to zero when I left had increased to SSW at 6 knots so once well clear the sails went up for a chilly but pleasant trip across Lyme Bay kept busy trimming the sails to cope with the variable wind. Without a significant wind shift I clearly wasn’t going to make Hallsands or Plymouth so I was resigned to Torbay, hopefully to anchor rather than spending an expensive night in a marina.

The wind picked up to c 11 knots from the south at mid day then to 15 -17 knots at about 14:00 so it was a quick reach in to Brixham and I was at anchor off of a cove next to the harbour which is in two parts named Fishcombe Cove and Churston Cove, there are now 3 large mooring buoys in the cove effectively filling it so I anchored in 10 metres just off. 

Wending my way to Brixham.

Brixham from the anchorage, Battery Park on the right.

Fishcombe Cove / Churston Cove, Battery Park on the left.

49 nautical miles in 12 hours.

Click here for the trip round to Fowey.

2023 April 15th Day 1 - Hamble to Portland.

After a lot of false starts due to weather I finally went sailing on Saturday 15th April, a month later than hoped for and after a tedious trip down by rail the day before, going via London because the mainline between Oxford and Didcot was closed due to problems with a bridge over the Thames. I was disappointed to find that the Hamble COOP had no chicken and only one pack of pork on its sell by date so I left relying largely on tinned food and cured meat.

On a neap tide the start was at 05:45, it would have been a bit earlier but I had to wait for enough light to see the lines in the water, particularly important as there was a brisk NW wind also making it tricky to get off of the trot mooring without hitting the boat in front of me even with the tide pushing me into the wind and away from her.

Not unusually just before high water, there was shipping to avoid, a big cruise ship, a container ship and a car carrier so I was close to NE Gurnard (East of Beaulieu river)  before I switch to sail, just the headsail in the gusty F4 – F5 north westerly wind until past St Albans head, but making good speed through the water although I did not pick up any significant favourable tide until past West Lepe, then it was at least 7 knots or more over the ground until past the Needles.

Hurst Castle now with new sea defences and rebuilding of the
collapsed northern casements well underway.

Approaching the Needles.

Sea breaking on the shingles bank despite a moderate F4 wind, rather a rocky ride due to over-falls at "The Bridge".

The Lulworth range was inactive on the last weekend of the school holidays so I was able to keep fairly close in to St Albans, but not so close as to get significantly less wind and with the early start I was well past before the tide turned adverse and I made Portland under sail at 15:00 to anchor in solitary splendour until a sport boat turned up for a couple of hours then a yacht that arrived after dark.

Track (the thick red line) on SeaPro, a little cluttered by thin
red lines that are trails of boats tracked by AIS, there are lots
of boats shown but most have the details hidden and icons
minimised to partially de-clutter the screen. In use it is not a
problem as its on a 17" laptop screen and if it became a
problem they are easily removed.

A pleasant sail reaching all the way, but chilly. 53 NM in a little over 9 hours.

Click here for the leg across Lyme Bay.

2023 April 5th - Plans C & D

Plan B was to leave Hamble on Wednesday the 12th, but a spanner has been thrown into the works; on Monday a structural problems led to a rail bridge over the Thames and the track between Oxford and Didcot being closed until the end of the month. It is a busy commuter route to London and there is insufficient bus availably to cope. To go to the boat by rail I will have to go via London, but the Bicester - London line has limited capacity and is even more overcrowded than usual with people diverting from Oxford. Trying to get to Southampton and the Hamble on a working day does not look like a good idea. 

Plan C is therefore to revictual the boat on Saturday and I will make the trek via London with weekend train and bus timetables on Sunday or take a coach from Oxford.

That is the extent of the plan, yesterday three models showed favourable winds from Monday or Tuesday for at least 5 days. Now each shows a depression out in the Atlantic developing differently and taking a slightly different route which could give strong adverse winds or benign conditions. 

Forecasts on the 5th April for 07:30 on the 11th April and wind direction and strength off the Isle of Wight. On the 4th all three had been fairly close to the European model below. The ECMWF and GFS diverge further through Saturday, the UK models does not go out that far.

European model, ECMWF  W by S, 4 - 6 knots..

American model, GFS WNW 21-32 knots.

UK Met Office W by S, 13 - 25 knots.

I doubt I'll know when I will leave or were stop over places will be until I am on the boat and perhaps not for several days thereafter.

Update 6th April

Well it looks like plan C is already broken, inside a day the 3 models above have converged and its not good with the depression deepening and heading straight for us and another shaping up to do the same.

ECMWF forecast for Wednesday 12th April

At present it looks like I might get away on the 17th but looking at some of the medium range forecasts I would not be surprised if I am delayed until May 😒😒😒😒😒😒

Click here for what actually happened.

2023 March 18th - Scrub and Anti-foul.

A quite evening on Friday lit by my posh new oil
lamp that replaced a now rather battered hurricane
lamp, my only non-essential purchase for the
boat in at least 12 months, certainly a record 😇.
It is fully gimbled and the base rotates 90 degrees
 to hang on a bulkhead or my mast support..

On Thursday, Saturday suddenly looked good for a scrub with light winds  and, unusually one day after neaps, there was likely to be enough water to get in and with the evening tide being higher there was no danger of being "Neaped". The maintenance dock was available and it was too good to miss so I quickly booked. 

First high water was at a sociable 07:43 and there would be sufficient water to get out of the dock from 19:30 - 20:00 which would allow me to get onto the mooring with the last of the flood tide. All good except it would be dark with no moon for my return.

Saturday broke with intermittent light rain and little wind so I was expecting a straight forward albeit damp departure from the trot mooring but it was not to be, the pick up line swept under the boat and caught the keel, the first time it has done that, so I had to get back on the mooring, disconnect one end of the line to clear it, now under time pressure to get off the mooring before the stand / second high which would be a bit lower and fearing a repeat I left it like that and later went back in the dinghy to reconnect everything.

With little wind and on the last of the first flood getting onto the piles was relatively straightforward although there was a narrow gap and a tricky left / right turn between the pile and one of the clubs launches, unfortunately the part time bosun's were not starting work until 09:00 or they could have moved one or more.

On the piles, in a little under 2m of water now a long wait for the
stand to end and the tide to drop 1.5 metres before I could start
work in knee deep water, wearing waders.

The A9m officially draws 1.67m / 5ft 6"  but with a bigger engine lots of batteries and fuel Sancerre has put on some weight so 1.7 - 1.72m is probably nearer the mark. The tidal gauge shows the depth about half way in to the dock.

Sancerre about to settle in 1.8m of water, the spinnaker
halyard is out to the right and tensioned to ensure the
boat leans against the piles. Helpfully the auto pilot
control unit measures heel and the plotter can display
it (not a given, the other NMEA 2000  instruments can't)
so I cranked on 2.5 degrees and maintained that as
she dropped.

Touching forward - the dock floor slopes down to the river. 

1.6m of water and the aft lashing to the pile had to be eased so that
the stern could drop.

I had just finished power washing when the light rain turned heavy, just when I needed the boat dry, so I retired to the bar for a quick pint as the squall past. Power washing is harder work than you might think, the industrial unit is powerful enough that you have to brace yourself or get knocked over so the rest was welcome. No pics at this stage because of the rain and I was busy.

Job done, two coats of white antifoul to the boot line which was
raised last year in something of a rush so it was rather thin on
the part of the boat that gets the most growth. Some of the
blue was touched up, leading edges get the most wear and
knocks and was a bit thin in places.

Surprisingly the shaft anodes, one over a year old and one 8 months were almost as good as new so were not replaced, the year old small anode on the P bracket was badly eroded so was.

Getting out of the dock is tricky with prop walk more a hinderance than a help until past the end of the pontoon and the three launches moored to it. To help I put a long line to the stern of the middle launch and used that to haul her back and then into the launches as the tide took Sancerre away from them. With almost no wind I was then able to motor out slowly backwards then turn with he prop walk before heading back to the mooring.

The line going to the second launch in the pic and was a big help,
if there had been more wind I would probably have run my long
(100m) line over to the finger in the next door marina and turned the
boat there before going out into a stronger wind and tide. 

A berth at that marina would be about six times what I pay for a
mooring 2 cables down stream and that is not cheap.

Pulling three and a half tonnes of boat fore and aft single handed in still water is not a problem but pulling one sideways or with a tide running is; so on top of the other work it is going to take me a day or two to recover 😞. 

Plans

The tide is good to leave for points west on or about the 29th but the weather does not look promising [Edit: and a few days later looked even worse], not being as fit as I would like I would prefer not to start the cruise by taking on a 30 - 36 hour direct trip to Start Point or Plymouth so to get a good tide through the Portland Bill inshore route, I will not get away until Wednesday April 12th at the earliest, disappointing but hopefully it will be a bit warmer and I will have a few days chasing trout 😀 after the season opens on the chalk streams in early April.

I'm now on Plan C, see the next post.

2023 March 3rd - Preparing for the scrub and a shout out to "Total Tide"

The RAFYC maintenance dock is a very economic alternative to a lift out for a pre-season scrub and touch up of the anti-fouling, Sancerre had 3 coats a year ago and another in July so should be OK for this season but the boot line was changed in July so an extra coat on that seems sensible and perhaps another coat of blue if it looks thin and time permits. 

The dock is equipped with an industrial standard power washer so once the tide has dropped the clean does not take long, but you do have to be careful not to take off the anti-foul by getting too close.

The RAFYC maintenance docks (© RAFYC). Getting in is
reasonably straightforward, getting out trickier as there is
little room between the RAFYC launches on the pontoon and
boats in the marina and Sancerre does not steer that well going
slow astern, but there is good protection from the tide much of
the way so I can warp her through the narrow part if necessary.

An early start is required to enable me to be in and out in one tide, to use the full 24 hours I would need to be there as she lifted on the second tide and settled on the following ebb - and I could not reasonably stay on board. 

The dock sill is at 2m above datum and Sancerre draws 1.7 metres so I need close to 4 metres to get in and out safely allowing for a lower than predicted tide if there is particularly high atmospheric pressure and / or a NE wind. That is not available at neaps so I went for the 13th March, four days before the neap tide, far enough away to avoid being "neaped" (Having sufficient water on one tide but insufficient on the next to get out or off) but close enough that I would have enough daylight for the scrub, replacing the anodes and any touch up work.

The days tide as shown by Admiralty "Total Tide", many
apps do not show the curve for the Hamble accurately, particularly
the 2nd high, often shown as a simple "stand" or not at all and
the "Young Flood Stand" starting c 2.5 hours after low water.

I need dead slack water or an incoming tide to get on and off the mooring so going into the dock at 04:30 gives a few hours sleep and, even allowing for any depressed height, sufficient water to get in on the second high and plenty of water on the first high at at 14:00 to get out of the dock.

Admiralty "Total Tide" vs the rest.

It's interesting to compare this prediction from Imray's Tides App (and
 most other apps) with the "Gold Standard" the Admiralty's "Total
Tide" shown above it, the later is expensive but far more detailed in
complex situations you find around the Solent, Poole etc.

Total Tide will do a lot more and to a very fine resolution, of
course wind and atmospheric pressure will impact the above
but its a very good starting point. Unfortunately it only runs
on a PC.

And tidal streams as well - more than shown on the charts, here
the Portland inshore route is just opening on March 17th although
 at the time of writing it looks like the weather will not be good
enough to leave that week.

Update March 7th: With a couple of exceptions the weather models have started to come together and there is a good chance of 20 - 40 knots of wind along the south coast early next week, too much to safely get off of the piles and onto the mooring single handed and I have no desire to beat against a strong south westerly to go sailing so I have booked the piles for another day on Monday the 27th and if the weather is reasonable I'll be looking to leave on the following Wednesday to go round the Portland inshore route on Friday 31st.

If I am able to get on and off the piles next week I will do so and perhaps come out a second time on the 27th to put a full coat of anti-foul on.

Click here for "The Scrub".

2023 Plans

The April wind rose for Portland from Predictwind
showing the preponderance of favourable winds
to get from the Hamble to the west, the only month
of the year when westerlies are not predominant.

In anticipation of the web site disappearing (probably in the distant future) I have converted the more important threads into PDF documents so I'll have a continuing record. These are somewhat easier to read, I have not made any significant edits but there are fewer pictures and no video. Links from downloaded copies should still work if on line. I may later put further links to Flickr for videos but probably not for the slide shows because of the effort required and the likely hood of the Flickr library disappearing with the web site (with thousands of images it has to be paid for). 2023 St Kilda.

Click here to go straight to the sailing skipping over all the preliminaries.

February; and it is still five or six weeks before I can realistically go sailing, the boat needs one delivery trip with stores, cloths etc., half a days work to prepare her for sea and a scrub after being on the mooring for five months. The big problem with self ablating (polishing) anti foul is that if you don't use the boat the depleted paint does not polish off and it stops working so the bottom and particularly the boot line (the white strip on the waterline) are filthy, enough to noticeably reduce boat speed. 

Of course the other side of the coin is if you use the boat a lot the antifoul gets depleted quickly so I get caught both ways.

To save quite a lot of money I will, wind permitting, dry her out in the RAFYC maintenance dock on the 13th March and attack the mess with the industrial power washer, change the shaft anodes, and I will then be ready to go. 

The plan is to have another go at St Kilda visiting Barra and hopefully the Monach Isles on-route, then either continue to Orkney and hopefully Shetland or to come south to Pwllheli for the start of the Jester Challenge to Baltimore (IRE) in mid June - that plan failed in 2021 but I may have a bit more time this year..

There is a good chance of easterly winds during April and often in late March, to help me down to Land's End, much preferable to bashing into a westerly, so I'll be tracking the weather very carefully. 

To be able to use the inshore route around Portland Bill at daybreak I will be looking for decent weather with an easterly wind about two days before a neap tide so the 15th or 29th March would suit, the 13th April is after Easter so I might bite the bullet of an overnight trip with no sleep and go direct from the Solent to The Start on a spring tide in early April.

Hopefully it will still be possible to anchor behind Hurst Point  now that a new bank has appeared, probably due to work stabilising Hurst Castle. Even close to neaps the depth of water was marginal over much of the area with a charted depth of only c 1m at LAT and 2.1m at LW on the 15th March and 3.3m in the deeper spots (Sancerre draws 1.7 metres) , it may be shallower or deeper now towards  Keyhaven, hopefully the latter. I'll investigate on the day and go on to Studland if necessary.

Video by Nick Boxall on U-Tube

Update 18th Feb:

Looking good for favourable winds in mid to late march but it could be cold, we shall see.

Preparing for the scrub.