Part 2:3 – 5 December 2018 

Skipper Chris Watts  , with Sue Fowle  , John Hartland  , Ewart Hutton  , Colin Hodges  and Gordon Ogden  .

The strong winds and poor weather continued into Monday and, after my tales of a lively bow and lively sailing with three reefs, it was decided to wait a bit for the weather to calm down a bit. Well, it didn’t on Monday! We did our own familiarisation of the yacht during the morning and went for various walks in the afternoon. John walked to Gilkicker Point, while others crossed to Portsmouth and walked towards Southsea!

Tuesday dawned calm and quiet, the absolute antithesis of Monday! Sue neatly took us out of the berth and we spent a few minutes raising full sail, the bottom of the luff being tensioned with a Cunningham system. We saw that one reefing line had not been tied in correctly, so we put that right. Off we went to sea and had a delightful sail at 7-9 knots of boat speed with about 7-9 knots of wind! RelaX  points very high indeed into the wind and we made a good course westwards. Much attention was paid to tide heights, depths of water, etc and Ewart, who is doing Day Skipper (Shorebased) enjoyed himself with some secondary port calculations and other navigation!

The wind died somewhere near Cowes around mid-day, so we motored down into the Western Solent and anchored for lunch on the Hampshire side ...... clear of the underwater obstructions!! RelaX has an anchor snubber to relieve pressure on the chain and windlass, which was eventually located in the rope locker and deployed, in accordance with PYC wishes. With no sign of any wind, we motored into East Cowes for our evening meal at The Lifeboat.

The weather changed again overnight and a brisk southerly wind, up to 25 knots, together with a flat sea, gave us grand sailing across towards Calshot, up the Thorn Channel and down the North Channel. Chris decided against the Outer Swashway, so we turned at Outer Spit SCM and approached Portsmouth Harbour by way of the main channel/small boat channel.

The Haslar pontoons were well sheltered from the wind and Chris expertly glided us into the berth to complete the trip. Masterclass!

Many thanks to Chris for the trip and to all for the provisions, for the company and for the usual banter!