Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Easter - Off and Running III



Our plan for Sunday was to head across to Beaulieu for lunch before heading back to Cowes for the evening.

So, we had breakfast, followed by a walk down towards Island Harbour marina with Clem to get rid of some of her excess bounce, followed by a once over of the boat next to us to try and get rid of the worst of her paw prints!

For the first time since June 11th 2006, we had to fill the tank with diesel, so we headed to a fuel berth on the way out. After a fairly clumsy docking effort (trying to come in with the tide to get the fuel filler on the right side - bad move), we parted with all of £12.41 to fill the tank. Perhaps I should put a two cylinder diesel in the Volvo.

Our Beaulieu plan didn't come to much. With wind and tide running West to East, we made very little progress Westwards towards the Beaulieu River entrance. How little progress we made can be seen from the fact that we had to get the motor on to get away from the Bramble West Cardinal mark just before this

swung past us.

The Cardinal mark is almost due North of Cowes, so we'd had practically no movement Westward in the couple of hours we'd been sailing. It was good practice, though and we eventually decided to swing around and head back into the Medina River.

Cowes Yacht Haven was full up, so we called up East Cowes again. They allocated us a berth rafting up against a very, very shiny new boat, so we told the nice young man sorting out berths from his rib that we had a dawg on board and were given a spot alongside the pontoon - result!

Nothing much to report from here on in. We had a little light lunch and a couple of glasses of wine. Clemmie and I then had a snooze while Missy headed off to the showers, then off to the Sally Taxi stop on the pontoon and over to Cowes for dinner at the Anchor.

We were slightly worried about whether the Anchor minded dogs, so snook her into the back room and under the table. We shouldn't have worried as about two minutes later a great dane the size of a pony wandered in, so yet another dog-friendly pub then.

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