Balmy Summer days

Chichester Harbour entrance 12th July 2008. Yep, that's a tornado over Selsey. Well, not quite. It's a funnel cloud coming down from an apocalyptic looking cloud line. We didn't see it touch down, but apparently Selsey is England's little tornado alley.

We were going to try and head over to Cowes, despite the fairly ropey weather, because we'd got James on board for the first time. We knew the tides would be against us, with high tide at 7:00am, but the wind was against us too. After three hours of pitifully slow progress against wind and tide, we were still only level with the Langstone Harbour. We could have pressed on and got to Cowes at about 7pm, but we decided that Chichester was still closer, and so we turned around and had a very pleasant sail back. With wind and tide favouring us, the GPS was showing a healthy 7 knots at times, which was nice.

The weather was still pretty indifferent though. We were hoping not to be in fleeces in the middle of July! Ah well, the food at the Ship was particularly fab.


We did manage a short sail and picnic in the harbour on Sunday. With no particular place to go and two crew to pull on the sheets, we spent some time tacking up the channel from Itchenor to East Head. Despite much moaning from the crew about tacking every couple of minutes, I thought it was quite fun. Of course I wasn't doing any work.

As the level of mutinous grumblings started to build up, I decided discretion was the better part of valour and headed up Thorney Channel to find a buoy to hang off while we had a little light lunch. Missy seemed much chirpier after a couple of glasses of pink wine, although she did refuse to do the first mate duties on the way back to base.