Solent sailing on “Lady Emma”, 9/10 February 2013 – report by Bob Buchanan

Bob Buchanan and Becky Goddard (Bristol Sailing), Kevin & Colin regular Lady Emma crew.

We all met on Friday evening at Ocean Quay, Southampton for our first sail this year. Lady Emma has been out of the water to have her bottom scrubbed and also a few other jobs done over the winter months. he evening meal is usually done by Becky, but this time it was done by me, Spag/Boll cooked in red wine. It went down very well with everyone, but the best bit is that it stayed down.

Saturday. After a bit of a lie in after my spag/boll and a few bottles of ale and red wine, we had breakfast (eggs, bacon, beans, and haggis) Thanks to Bex for the haggis.

We left Ocean Quay at midday, motored down Southampton water in very light wind, but very cold and wet. We motored over to Port Solent and got to the lock at 15.30. The water over the sill was 2.2mts, so we thought it was not a problem for Lady Emma, as for years we believed she drew 1.9mts. We slowly entered the lock, but then came to a halt as we grounded on the sill. We tried going forward, backward, everyone on one side then the other, but the boat would not move. They opened the lock gate to see if a sudden rush of water would do the trick but it didn’t. We were 30mins before low water so all we could do was sit there and wait for the tide to go down then start rising. Unfortunately, the last 15/20minuits saw Lady Emma’s mast getting very close to Port Solent traffic lights, we were slewing about, so had to do something about it. We tied a line from Lady Emma’s starboard winch, to a guard rail on shore. We tensioned it just enough to stop us moving and colliding with the traffic lights. (They were useless anyway as we were in the lock and no boats were able to come in or out)

Eventually, we floated off and backed up to the waiting pontoon (well almost, we ran aground about 3mts from it, so we thought, let’s wait here until we can sail into the lock). As we were waiting, we contacted the administrator of Lady Emma to explain what had happened. The reply back was that Lady Emma drew 2.40mts, and had been measured while she was out of the water. We eventually entered the lock and berthed in Port Solent.

The night was spent in an Indian Restaurant, and we all had a very enjoyable meal.

Sunday. What a terrible day to wake up to, it was rain/sleet F6.

We had a light breakfast as we were planning to go to the Island Sailing Club for Sunday lunch. We left at 11.00 motored down to the entrance to Portsmouth, then turned to Cowes. We had a no.2 Genoa tied to the toe rail, but changed it to the no.3 storm jib. With the wind behind us, tide going our way, and the storm jib up, we were surfing along at just over 8knts. That was the good news; the down side to things was that we were very wet and very cold. A decision was taken to give Cowes and Sunday lunch a miss, and head straight back to Ocean Quay.

We berthed at 15.00 and had a hot meal, cleaned up and went home.

One of the best weekends with friends, one of the worst weekends for sailing. 40NM logged