Interregnum

A day of preparing to leave the boat for a while as we go variously to London, Lytham & Kirkcaldy for work and family. 

Rob & Hugh at the Royal Clarence Marina are very helpful and we know they will keep a close eye on her for us, as they do all the boats in their charge (and they do have some huge yachts and motor boats). 

So we moved Sirena IV to her allocated berth, cleaned the salt off everything, did the washing, ate as much of the remaining food as possible, packed two bulging rucksacks, battened down the hatches and hiked the 15 mins to the Gosport ferry which whisked us over to the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour rail station. The weather was good enough to rain on us, an attempt perhaps to lessen the sorrow of parting. Now we are trundling through Hampshire, which seems slightly strange. 

We will let family & friends know when this blog restarts. 

Naval berth

We have spent the day lazing in our snug berth in what was the old Navy victualling yard in Gosport. These days it is the Royal Clarence Marina but you can still see the former Granary which was built on stout columns,  presumably to keep out the rats. 

Opposite the marina lie the long grey warships of today's Navy. We deserved a day off after furious efforts to get this far West before our return to London.

We are leaving Sirena IV here for a while.  Later we hope to take her to Nic's boyhood sailing ground of Studland and Poole bay, only 30 miles away.

It's quiet and peaceful here,  very welcome after the horror of Brighton. We didn't give you the full picture in the last blog but here are the headlines. 

We had to wait outside the marina as they hadn't dredged it and it was too shallow at low tide. 

We had to 'raft" on to 2 other boats because it was so full. 

We were swept by tide IN the marina on to another boat. 

Half an hour wait in the office to pay as computers down and chaos reigned. 

Took an hour and 6 people to get us off the other boats in the morning due to tide pinning us down. 

We will never go back to Brighton.  End of. 

The calm and the mayhem

Pics are Beachy Head as landfall and someone mid channel demonstrating that it's not hot on 1 Aug. 

Oops, forgot to blog on 2 nights running ... so this covers Fri&Sat.  First the facts. The feelings (which cover the mayhem) may be in a following blog, suffice to say we will be avoiding Brighton in future! 

Fri: 70 nm passage from Dieppe to Brighton in F0-2 so motor sailing took 13 hrs. Lots of shipping though we managed to thread between them without altering course. The autopilot is a wonderful thing because there is little joy in helming when motoring. Had to wait outside Brighton with 6 other yachts because near low tide there is not enough water in the marina. Then we had to raft, luckily with v helpful Dutch & Belgium. 

Sat: left Brighton asap re tide not least to let others out. 45 nm to Portsmouth with SW F4-5 on the nose and wind over favourable tide so very bouncy. Motor sailing again.  Only took 8hrs as with tide helping we were doing 7-8kns at times.  Went round Owers as the Looe channel would be v unpleasant in these conditions. Went into Royal Clarence Marina this time, the one we did not use last summer - what a revelation, loads of space, very quiet, fine facilities. Zzzzz