CCSC Solent Cruise 2024
Published 8:46am on 3 Oct 2024
Silver Girl started out on the Thursday night to take a good tide to Swanage for an overnight stay on the SC swinging mooring. £15.00. Jenorah and Seraphim started out Friday morning as the sun came up against a foul tide to head for Lymington. Unfortunately Jenorah picked up a lobster pot line on leaving Swanage close to Peveral ledge! This meant it had taken Steve (Jenorah) a long time to meet up with Silver Girl at 11.00am. Silver Girl tried to sit alongside Jenorah and to pull her free, but! This ended up in damage to Silver Girl!
So after a rethink Silver Girl Anchored up close to Jenorah and I donned my wet suit mask and fins and swam over to Jenorah to cut away the tangled mess. After an hour's worth of diving under the boat and cutting away we were free to continue on to Lymington where all three boats moored onto the Town Quay for a very pleasant meal close by and caught up on the day's events.
Next morning with a foul tide we set out for Portsmouth. Having tried tacking across the Solent amongst the myriad of boats all around us we all gave up and motor sailed close to the North shore to arrive at Gunwharf Quay at around 6.00pm.
A very pleasant night was then spent on board Seraphin after Irene had cooked up our supper and starters from Seraphin's crew.
Silver Girl and Jenorah set off early next morning after refueling across the water at Gosport Marina and motor sailed to begin with until we were then swept along with the West going tide to take us all the way out of the Solent across Christchurch Bay to Studland, where we moored up on the new experimental buoys (£10) per night.
Monday morning saw an grey drizzly morning and wind from the WNW. So a tacking sail until rounding Durlston headland and on through St Albans on the inside passage (rather bumpy for a bit) tide now with us so speeded up well, only to be ushered out to the outer range limits as firing was in progress at the Lulworth range. Very poor vis all the way home to get the 4.00pm. bridge back into our pontoon.
Summary. Don't go sailing on foul tides!
Penmapship & Photo's: Bob Todd (Silver Girl)