Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Big church, little church


Sunday dawned bright and clear. I know about the dawn part of that, because for the third Sunday morning running, I got to see the sunrise. What a considerate dawg Clementine is. For some reason she's been deciding that, when on the boat, sunrise is potty time. It looks like this. It's very pretty. It's very tiring. If she does it one more time, she's sleeping in the car.

I took Missy and her mum into Chichester later in the morning so that they could go to a service at the Cathedral. It's very beautiful. They didn't pick a great day for oratory though. The sermon was by the cathedral treasurer who, although undoubtedly is a fine upstanding man, did rather focus on the minutiae of church finances. Still, the view's nice.


After lunch (crab sandwiches at Dell Quay), we headed down to Bosham to see the saxon church (and eat ice creams). The church contains stones from a Roman basilica that stood on the site and is one of the few saxon churches in the country, with a continuous history of some 1600 years. Pretty impressive.

Landlubbers


Another weekend on the boat, but this time we were just like proper marina-dwellers and didn't venture from the pontoon. Missy's mum is with us for the first leg of her summer tour and she gets very prone to motion sickness, so bobbing on a small boat wasn't ever going to be on the agenda!

It did give us chance to explore some of the countryside around the harbour on another beautiful weekend. We liked it - the sea dawg would like to see some nice cool, dank weather, though.

After an initial attempt to connect a breather line to the diesel tank (I abandoned the struggle with chafed knuckles after about 30 minutes. I can see why it was left off) we headed across the fields for a walk to Itchenor, it's about three miles each way and has the advantage of having the Ship at the end of it. There's not much point in a walk without a pub somewhere along the way, after all.

I didn't get too many complaints about the length of the walk in the heat, but I think that says more for the forbearance of Missy and her mum than my judgement. They did both sleep for quite a long time after we got back, though.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Second Sunday.


Sunday free-flow at the marina started at 10:30 so, with no lock to negotiate, we didn't have much of an excuse not to bite the bullet and try our first two-handed sail with Moonshine.

So it was on with the sea-dawg's lifejacket, plenty of scratching of heads about what order to slip the mooring lines, and off into the not-so wild blue for a brief jaunt.

With a southerly breeze and our lack of experience we motored up the channel rather than getting the sails up. Heading into the wind was more pleasant for Clementine, who isn't enjoying the current hot weather at all, poor thing.

We headed out to East Head and the throng of anchored boats gathered there, before working out that with the tide starting to ebb quite quickly, if we headed out over the bar as originally planned we were going to be out for hours. (maximum ebb over the bar six knots, maximum hull speed of Jaguar 27 6.2 knots or thereabouts) We thought it better to turn around and try our first attempt at actually sailing in the shelter of the harbour, so a quick spin around and just the genoa up, and we were hurtling along on a reach at all of 2.5 knots. Hmmm, mainsail? Yay, 3.5 knots. First observation from someone who is only used to 37' and larger charter boats - isn't it easy to get the mainsail up on a 27' boat?

We had a lovely, if too brief, sail back towards the marina, with everything becoming altogether more peaceful without a two-cylinder diesel rattling our fillings. With a fairly light breeze we saw almost six knots over the water, which bodes well for future travels.

We locked back in (not quite the M25-like queues of last Sunday) without too many dramas, filled her with diesel (and found that a breather pipe has been left off the fuel tank after her refit, so we found out that a small amount of diesel makes a very large mess in water. something to be fixed next weekend) and got back onto the pontoon with a big sigh of relief.

Hey, we now know that we can sail two-handed :-)

Two-timing

Second time on the boat. Second wedding anniversary. Just the two of us this time. Second post on here.

It was a jaded pair this time, too. Friends round for cocktails and Missy's determination to perfect the mambo #5 margerita (tequila, lime, sangria, midori, cointreau and heavens knows what else) didn't make for an early Saturday morning start.

We eventually arrived at the boat at around 3:30pm, with the temperature around 30deg C, and England making hard work of beating Paraguay 1-0 in Frankfurt. With the tide at rock bottom and just the two of us we didn't feel brave enough to take an afternoon jaunt around Chichester Harbour, so we did what most of the marina-dwellers there seem to do - we went to the bar for a couple of beers. Well we needed to book a taxi for later and where else is guaranteed to have taxi firm numbers?

Our celebratory anniversary dinner was booked at Purchases in Chichester for 8:45. Very nice it was too. A warm summer evening, dinner in the walled garden with a fountain burbling in the centre, G&T's, good food, a pleasant bottle of Pouilly Fusee (and of course excellent company) , then back to the boat for a nightcap in the cockpit watching the stars and satellites overhead as the sky gradually faded to black. Life can get pretty good sometimes.

Monday, June 05, 2006

First Post


Last week we bit the bullet and bought this. Her name is Moonshine and she's a 1972 Jaguar 27. We've seen a lot of tatty boats over the winter, but Moonshine has just had a comprehensive re-fit, with a new engine, new standing rigging and new interior upholstery, so she's looking rather smart. (Although perhaps not the custard-yellow anti-slip paint - that may have to go sooner rather than later).

We've just spent our first weekend on her and, after spending lots of cash in the chandlery up the road to buy some safety gear, we ventured out into Chichester Harbour on Sunday afternoon. Busy, isn't it?

Highlights of our learning curve were the summer beginning as we arrived, getting out of the dock and back in without damaging anything, and managing to lock in and out without drama.

Lowlights (minor ones) touching the bottom twice on the way out of the navigation channel (When the sign says 2m depth in the channel, that doesn't seem to be strictly true!) and once out in the main channel (Oops. We live and learn).

Clementine the dawg seemed to acclimatise to life as a sea-dawg quickly and looks very smart in her new red lifejacket.

So, onwards and upwards. We're keeping our fingers crossed for a summer of fair winds, cold beers and picnics in the harbour.