Out to Sea!!!

The weekend, and we need to test the work on the oil leak.
Was it all the fault of a dodgy dipstick? Saturday sees us watering at the visitors pontoon at Chichester Marina, mooring up was a better job than last time, but still only 5/10, at least we were unobserved this time.

We want to set out of Chichester Harbour and sail to Bembridge on the Isle of Wight, I have done the Passage Planning

and also added a GPS to the gadget collection. This is a Garmin 12 handheld that was a gift from my mum when we started doing geocaches several years ago. Combining it with the Power Monkey Extreme to keep it on charge, it works well.

Here I must thank the people at PowerTraveller, my gadget had developed a fault the previous weekend, and they sent a very nice lady down with a replacement to meet us at Dell Quay before we set off.
Check them out: http://www.powertraveller.com/

The engine looked great, no oil was leaking, the tides were accomodating, but the wind was a little stronger than either of us would have liked. Instead of heading south at Sparkes Marina, (the entrance of the Harbour) we turned north and had a pleasant sail into Emsworth.
Once again we failed to get to the pub because we misjudged a marker and speant a few hours on the mud.

However an early start next morning got us down the Emsworth Channel and out to sea!

Leaving West Pole Beacon and off to the Solent

We never actually got to Bembridge because we needed the same tide to come in on. Coming into Chichester Harbour on Spring tides as it was, and with South or South Westerly winds the window is 3 hours before and one hour after High Water. We guessed that turning back towards home at 13.00 would give us the last opportunity to get in with that window.
We slightly overran, and also the wind had picked up, this illustrated  the importance of  local
 advice. Because it is so shallow here, and the tide floods out at over 1 knot, with the wind against it the sea can get very choppy. We enjoyed the exhilaration of it, but wouldn't want to get caught out.

There wasn't enough time and tide to take us back to Dell Quay, now, so we repaired to our favourite anchorage East Head Spit, for lunch and rest. I was getting a bit grumpy because I was developing an ache in the back of my left knee which J later diagnosed as Baker's Cyst, he's had it and I now know I wasn't quite as sympathetic about it as I should have been. Sorry.

The wind continued all afternoon and by evening we observed an extaordinary caper; one of the few yachts left dry attempted to sail off. It was one of those big sleek shiny ones that Chichester Harbour is full of, they hoisted all sail even though the entire stern was clear of the water, suddenly they lifted and flew off heeling towards an anchored catamaran, the helmsman must have bottled it because she swerved sharply and hit the bottom again with a thud. From our perspective it looked as though they would have cleared the catamaran if they'd held their nerve. Anyway it was a sight to see. sorry, didn't have the camera to hand.

Hoping to be home by midnight, we set off up the Itchenor Channel by moonlight, the wind had completely dropped and it was a magical, quiet night, not really enough water under us to get home, we scraped and bumped the last bit as the tide caught up with us.