About us
Events
Ashdown Log
Members boats
Find out more
Links
Back
Home
By Guy Fowler
So the weekend had finally arrived and for the first time for several months I had managed to find the time to go sailing. I had also managed to persuade my dad to join us. He has been a passionate sailor for as long as I can remember but had not been sailing since he left the Channel Islands 30 years ago, and so with new destinations planned as well, it promised to be a good weekend, all we needed was some wind.
Saturday morning started with the usual car trip towards the south coast, our destination being Northney, to join Eliona . It was a bright morning but with little wind and for a change a relatively clear A27 through Chichester. Graham was there to meet us along with John & Janny Taylor.
After cleaning off Eliona, courtesy of the local bird life, we set off for Whitecliff Bay, on the Isle of Wight, for lunch. It was a glorious morning and once we cleared the Bar Beacon there was enough wind to have a reasonable sail. The wind was unpredictable so we had some fun on a couple of occasions, most us had a go at doing a very neat 360 degrees, as I seem to recall.
Arriving in Whitecliff Bay after a very pleasant sail, we dropped anchor. What a nice change! Of course, being on Eliona, we had the advantage of an electric windlass, so it was not as hard work as it could have been. Lunch at anchor was very pleasant and Ashdown had the bay just about exclusively to ourselves. A couple of other boats arrived, obviously planning for a private lunch to find 7 boats already at anchor!
Heading back from Whitecliff Bay we had a fantastic sail all the way to the West Pole with a couple of tacks for good measure. At one point, much to our confusion, Fizzgig began to gain on us at a quite considerable speed. Trimming the sails achieved nothing but as they cleared us with water spouting from the stern, all became clear! The wind was favourable and we made good time back to the buoys outside Hayling Island Yacht Club, our destination for the evening.
Now you would have thought it would be relatively straight forward to find a visitors buoy, but Channel 37, which we had been advised to contact the club on, did not appear to exist and we could not locate any marked visitors buoys. Eventually after rendezvousing with Sea Holly and changing to Channel 37 M (local channel) we made contact, still no clearer as to what buoy we should pick up, we grabbed an appropriate buoy and moored up for the evening.
We caught the water ferry ashore and spent a pleasant evening in the Hayling Island Yacht Club before retiring for the evening. The food was good but unfortunately as the evening went on the music got louder and louder making conversation a challenge, but all in all a great change from the usual haunts and certainly worth returning to in the future.
On Sunday we decided to stay in Chichester harbour due to the tides and the time we would need to be back over the bar, as it so happened this worked out remarkably well as there was virtually no wind on the Sunday.
After slipping the buoy, we headed for Bosham. Despite having been sailing from Chichester for nearly 3 years I had never ventured off the main channel between the marina and the Solent so it was a great opportunity to see some other sights of the harbour.
We made our way up to Bosham amongst the moored boats in a narrow but well marked channel. Bosham looked a beautiful village from the harbour and I visited the village on the Monday from the shore side and it is well worth a visit if you have never been.
For lunch we picked up a buoy just off the main channel up from Itchenor and then made our way back to Northney.
It was a great weekend and really nice to do something different from just sailing marina to marina. The evening spent on the buoy and lunch at anchor, combined with new destinations for most of the crew all added up to a very enjoyable weekend, my thanks to Ian and Jean for organising a different and interesting weekend.
I would also like to thank Graham, John and Janny for making my Dad very welcome, he thoroughly enjoyed the weekend and I hope it has convinced him to find the time to do more sailing in the future.