Somewhat disappointing weather

We left Poole this morning bound for Dartmouth on the promise of 15kt wind and warmish temperatures.  What we ended up with was a rather good 30kt before lunch and next to nothing afterwards.  We have been flopping around for hours in the middle of Lyme Bay in a slight swell and the rattling and slatting of sails is driving me mad.  We are far enough off shore for there to be nothing to see apart from bits of sky that are marginally less grey than other bits of sky plus the odd glimpse of a military jet in the vicinity; Alex saw what looked like an airborne missile.

We’ve spent the last few days in the Solent-Poole area.  An interesting collection of ships visible from the water in Portsmouth: the 1860 HMS Warrior, our new aircraft carrier, many yachts and ferries.  Apparently Port Control deal with 80,000 boat movements a year through a harbour entrance 200 yards wide.  Being too mean to pay tourist rates to see the commercial attractions, we had a pleasant walk down to Southsea via the imposing naval war memorial and coastal defences of different eras.

Later across to Newtown River on the Isle of Wight for a couple of nights (very busy) and then over to Poole (even more busy).

Poole harbour is huge, but most of it is too shallow for us at low water!  I had forgotten, until I saw it on the chart, that Rockley Point is here – home to a sailing school where, years ago, I learned to sail a Topper.  There has been a Regatta during the bank holiday weekend and I have never seen so many sailing craft on the water at the same time: we watched them pour out of the harbour in the morning and back in the evening, a hundred or more in different shapes and sizes, most with big crews of 8-10 people.  Some very expensive sailing kit on show (Alex wants some of those black sails) but also plenty of more modest craft and motorboats of all sizes.  As all the marinas have been full, we have been very economical on our berthing fees this week.

Although we weren’t able to get ashore in Poole, we were able to pick up Owain and family for a fun day out.  Owain claims they are sailing novices, but they seemed naturals to us, as we ran across to Swanage Bay for lunch rolling around at anchor, followed by a fun bit of tacking and jibing practice in the shadow of all those black-sailed racing yachts.  Returning to Poole to drop them off we couldn’t even get a temporary berth to drop off and had to resort to a rather unnerving landing at the town quay against the wall.  We have brought fender boards but didn’t have time to put them on before arriving at the wall.  Thanks to the friendly and helpful guy who grabbed our lines as we wondered how to reach a cleat that was far above our heads!