Have done some great sailing since the first update, with trips from Portsmoth to Cowes, then on to Poole, to Weymouth and finally to Brixham where I write this. "Sunny intervals" describes the weather on most days, with good winds for sailing, except one trip, last night. We had planned to leave Weymouth early morning and sail the 52 miles to Dartmouth but there were gale warnings and the wind direction was against us, so our skipper decided to delay the trip. Eventually we did leave at 5:00pm late afternoon when the forecast was better, and sailed around Portland Bill with a storm jib up (a small sail at the front of the boat for storm conditions) expecting the worst. Around Portland Bill there is a tide race where the currents meet from different directions, so as a small boat you have to sail either close in to shore (no more than 200 metres) or well out to sea. Our route was the close in one - but as we were nearing Portland Bill and could see the breaking waves of the rough water in the race (a real sight given the winds were only 15 to 20 knots - it must be frightening in stronger winds) which we needed to avoid, our diesel engine again started to give us problems. It was too late to turn back as the tide was following us, so we continued to sail without the motor and did many short tacks staying close to the rocky cliffs - quite an exciting moment and I was on the helm. Our skipper managed to get the motor going again and we managed to motor the final section where the gap between the cliff and the disturbed water of the race is narrow. The rest of the sail was challenging in a different way because the wind reduced to a slight breeze, and was directly against our planned destination of Dartmouth, and also the tide was against, so we tacked up wind (zig zag sailing as close to sailing into the wind as you can) for hours upon hours, it got dark, the sky was full of stars, 2 hour watches all night long - and eventually motoring the last few hours to our destination at a low speed to stop avoid the engine problems recurring. We changed our intended destination from Dartmouth to Brixham, which is the base for the organising company as the sail from Weymouth had taken so long and we also needed to get the diesel engine fixed.
Another photo, this time of us in Lulwoth Xove on the sail from Poole to Weymouth:
Today is Thursday 16th July and our skipper for the first leg of the journey from London leaves us today, although he will also be our skipper on the last leg from Edinburgh back to London in mid September. This week we are based in Brixham and have shore based theory courses (more on the next update), setting off again on Saturday 25th. It is also time to clean the boat, get clothes washed, and generally recover from the first two weeks.
Regarding shopping, cooking, cleaning the boat and other domestics - the three crew have to share and take care themselves and given my accounting background, I have been put in charge of the kitty. Part of learning to be skipper is learning how to provision a boat - so you won't be surprised that so far we have generally been eating pre cooked meals from Waitrose! although this is blowing the budget a little!! Actually I am not being fair on myself, I have actually cooked from raw ingredients, sausage and mash on one occasion and chicken curry on the other (ok, I cheated, I used a jar for the sauce, but I did cook the chicken after a quick mobile call to Mum to check how long the chicken needed to be fried for!!). It is early days, but I fear food won't be a highlight of the trip, and given that I seem to be completely off eating when actually sailing I may even lose a little weight over the trip.
Tomorrow I am going to hire a car and go home to see Debbie and Simon (Lucy is in America) for a day and a half, back very early Sunday morning for a land based training session. There isn't an opportunity to do this again until we have a weekend free in Edinburgh mid September. No surprise that I am also going home with two weeks of dirty clothes washing ...
More soon ....
