Saturday 1st April … A BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY to CHARLIE who is a BIG 7 today!! It’s a BIG DAY for Thesee too….we’re on the move!! Our year at Royal Clarence Marina has come to an end. The time has gone by so quickly, and we’ve made friends with lots of lovely people. We’ve really enjoyed our time here and it’s quite sad to say goodbye. Thank you so much Royal Clarence for looking after us. The new shower block is finally open and so we had to go in and have a look before we left. Well impressed.
However, we were also excited about taking Thesee back to his river berth at Wicor Marine in Fareham Lake. It’s the third time we’ve taken a summer berth here. Super Skipper Dean took Thesee on his own (with the help of Saffy Dog), and Linda drove the car round to Wicor. Dean did a great job of berthing single-handed….ferry-gliding into position he tells me. I just had to wait on the dinghy pontoon until he was ready to come and pick me up.
Dean leaves Royal Clarence for his solo trip to Wicor
Chance to get a photo of Thesee on the move
Wicor pontoon, no chance of cadging a lift, place is deserted
Super Skipper at happy hour
It's evening now and there's not a breath of wind outside, so here's a couple of photos to end the day with.
The dredging works on the main channel out of Portsmouth
have finished and the red channel buoys have been re-aligned. We downloaded an
update of their lat/long positions from the Royal Navy website, and decided to
‘do our own survey’ of their locations, marking a waypoint on our chartplotter
as we passed them….No. 4 buoy, No. 2 buoy, Spit Refuge buoy, and Spit Elbow
buoy.
Calmness at dusk on Fareham Lake
The moon smiles down on us
Sunday 2nd April … The
summer season HAS really started! It was a beautiful morning, and it was
Linda’s turn to take Saffy for a walk along the pontoon. Dean took a quick
dinghy trip ashore to give Saffy a run about and check the car was ok. We’ve
been checking though our charts and realise we have just bought a Western
Mediterranean one (doh, we already had one!). Note to self….update the charts
spreadsheet.
Linda had sailing plans for us, and so we departed Wicor at 10.30am passing Bedenham Pier and the newly appeared Black Rover Warship, anchored to the big yellow buoys at Rame Head.
Linda had sailing plans for us, and so we departed Wicor at 10.30am passing Bedenham Pier and the newly appeared Black Rover Warship, anchored to the big yellow buoys at Rame Head.
Bedenham Pier
Black Rover
It was a very light wind, and so after motoring east out of
the Solent, we couldn’t resist getting the cruising chute up. It was a chance
to try the ATN tacker, one of Dean’s new toys that he purchased a few months
back. All went to plan, and we were having a whale of a time dilly-dallying along
at a mere 2 knots enjoying the glorious sunshine.
No we're not sailing south until the butter melts... Not today anyway
The cruising chute's snuffer sits aloft
We almost reached Nab Tower before turning back towards Chichester
Harbour, our destination for this evening. Once inside the harbour we anchored at
one of our favourite places… East Head, West Wittering.
Dean offloaded the
dinghy and took Saffy for a run along the beach, along with the camera to get
some shots of Thesee. Linda wants to get some Thesee ‘business cards’ printed
so we need to get a good photo of him. What do you think of this shot?
Monday 3rd April …
Oh my God, last night was the best night EVER at anchor. We hardly felt any movement
at all, even when the odd fishing boat passed by at dawn. The wind must have
been force 1 or even force 0 and Thesee gently floated around 180 degrees with
the changing tide. Even Saffy got a good night sleep, so it must have been
good.
For a change we made an omelette for breakfast, before
taking some photos of the lovely calm waters here in Chichester Harbour. The
sun was out and Linda commented that we could have actually been anywhere (she’s
dreaming again obviously).
British Virgin Islands??? or Chichester?
The AIS has not been transmitting consistently and Dean took
a little time investigating but he hasn’t solved the issue yet. So if you’re
trying to find us on Vessel Finder it
may be a previous position (check the date shown).
We finished off the last of Linda’s homemade bread, with the
final slice going to the fish. Sadly the suncream that came out yesterday had
to go back into the cupboard, because the sun disappeared and a mist set in. Next
we went ashore for a walk and Saffy leapt through the sand-dunes like a puppy
dog.
With Saffy's furry friends on the beach....where's Saffy??
A red flag means that the surf is up, or there are dangerous currents
Wierd stone? No, it's thick mud....still wierd
We had a chat to a fellow sailor who beached himself last night so that he could scrub off when the tide went out. He told us he'd being coming here to scrub off for the last 35 years. Wow!
High tide was at 5.30pm. There’s a sand bar at the harbour
entrance so we had to wait for sufficient tide to cross it, also the current is
strong so you don’t want to be going against it too much. With this in mind, we
had a few hours to spare this afternoon and so we did some jobs. Dean fitted his
new splitter for the new alternator, and Linda polished the fibreglass around
the cockpit area.
Thesee sits alone in the misty-ness
We set off at 4.30pm and had a quick sail back to
Portsmouth. Our depth and speed instruments seem to be having a bit of a
headache….the depth instrument has somehow converted itself from metres to
feet. Something we will look into tomorrow. At times the SOG (speed over
ground) was showing 9 knots. We were definitely sailing along quite quickly but
there was only 10 knots of wind, so it didn’t seem to ring true.
Our weekend adventure completed with our arrival back at
Wicor at 6.45pm. We finished off the evening with sausage, beans, potato
croquettes, and red wine. We know how to live the high life!
*A great start to the Summer Season*
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