Green Day

We've just got back from checking up on Moonshine after last week's gales, and she seems to be the greenest boat in the marina, there's probably more than twice the muck on her than there was even a couple of weeks ago.

Next weekend is going to be a late-winter cleaning party to try and get her looking a bit better. We're going to watch Derby vs Southampton on Saturday which is just up the road, so we'll stay overnight on the boat and spend Sunday cleaning, scrubbing and spraying to get her looking half way presentable.

On the bright side, it does give me an excuse to buy one of these little beasties....

Still Winter

Another huge gap between posts. Moonshine's still sitting in the water, waiting for one of the glorious winter days that I'd pictured in my mind. We'd be all wrapped up against the cold, on sunny crisp days, gliding across the mirrored surface of Chichester Harbour with just seals and wildfowl for company.

What have we had? Freezing fog, torrential rain, weeks and weeks of South Westerly storms battering the whole of the country. Pfah.

Moonshine's not been neglected, though. I've been down there once or twice a month to make sure that she's still there, to check fenders and lines for damage from the high winds and to run the engine for 30 minutes or so to keep the battery charged and get some oil pumped around the nooks and crannies of the engine.

One irritation is that the rather beautiful Malo yacht immediately next to us, put up the biggest cover you've ever seen once they'd done for the season.



As you can see from the picture, with the winter sun low in the sky, poor old Moonshine has barely seen the sun since the end of October. As a result, most of the deck and the sprayhood are now a vivid shade of green! Ah well, another task to be done once the days get a bit longer.

Here's Missy wrapped up against the cold and enjoying a cup of tea and a coconut macaroon (highly recommended). The sun was shining brilliantly, but with the circus marquee next to us, we were in the shade and it was only about 2pm!

Ploughing a new Furrow.

In which Mark and Rachel become jovial landlord and landlady of the Plough at Normanton on the Wolds, Nottinghamshire.



It's a lovely country pub which had become a bit sad and neglected recently. They closed it for three days to strip all the tired old stuff out and redecorate it. The beer's good, the food's great and the atmosphere's exceptional, so so far so good.

A reet classy latte....




A few more pictures are here

Happily, the menu does include the BVI-influenced cheesy fries and gravy.

A Considerable Rewind!

Another memory of warmer days to brighten up a November evening. This is James aged about 12 sitting on a small boat that we rented for the week on Lefkas. We mainly pottered around to a deserted patch of beach and lazed around or snorkelled, although we were more adventurous one day and headed off to Vathi on the neighbouring island of Meganissi. It's only about five miles, but it felt quite an adventure on such a small boat.

One that got away.

This is Apostle, The Contessa 32 that I was seriously thinking about buying in the spring. Initial estimates made it look feasible to buy her in Florida and bring her back over here. She's a lovely boat and sails like a dream, but Mike, her owner, has been too busy to give her the attention she needs and so she needs a lot of work to bring her back to her former glories.

In the end I decided that it would simply cost too much to ship her over and do the work required. Hopefully someone will see the potential soon, cos she's gorgeous.

Ooh, Shiny

Well, they turned out nicely.

Four of the bits of wood that I've been sanding and varnishing.

Before:













After:








It almost seems a shame to expose them to all that nasty salt spray and sunshine!

Rewind

As we hurtle headlong through the cosmos towards winter, here's a picture of Missy relaxing on Kalos at Leverick Bay in the BVI. Taken almost exactly a year ago.


I'm not sure what expression that is, but she's definitely facing in the general direction of the bar at Leverick Bay, so it probably involves thoughts on whether her next drink is going to be a beer or a painkiller.....ooh, or perhaps a bushwhacker. It's tough being a decision maker.

Long Time No Post

Quiet times for poor old Moonshine for the last six weeks or so. Missy had to go into hospital for an op so she's not been up to all the clambering and bending of life on the boat.

She's coming along nicely now, but it's getting very late in the season, so it may be a squeeze to get a weekend in before the weather gets just too wintery.

We've had two force nine gales in the past couple of weeks, so Moonshine's been treated to some new fenders. Because she was moored on mooring buoys previously, she only had tiny fenders which aren't much good at keeping her off the dock when the wind blows.

Plan A was to take her out of the water for the winter. The marina offers free onshore storage to 12 month berth holders, which sounds a good deal......but there's always a but.

The boatyard who actually carry out the work charge for their services in getting the boat in and out of the water, plus they insist on the mast being stepped and charge for storing it.

"Free" winter storage, therefore costs £600! Somehow that doesn't seem like much of a deal. I'm sure that the money can be put to better use than having her sitting in a car park for four months.

So she's staying in the water for the winter and I'll take her out in March to get her bottom scrubbed and her anodes checked. In the meantime most of her exterior woodwork is sitting in the shed being revarnished. Four coats down, one more to go and then the current batch (most of the big bits) can go back on the boat all shiny and protected against the elements.

Here's me sanding back the piece of teak trim that covers the edge of the hatch cover and doing a good impression of an aged shoemaker or something.

At least the sea-dawg is doing her best to help!

Downhill racing.

Sunday was pretty exhilarating with the spring tide and the wind going the same way as us. The GPS showed us touching 8 knots on the return to Chichester. Great sailing, with the weather forecast dissuading enough people from coming out to make the Solent pretty quiet. We did see this splendid ship coming up the other way though. (Even if they were cheating by motoring into the wind).

Everything was pretty quiet on board, until we turned north to get into Chichester Harbour and realised that the downwind sailing was hiding just how strong the wind was as we suddenly heeled over. Good job the sea-dawg was at home. She wouldn't have been impressed.

This is a graph of wind speed from the weather station on Chichester Bar Beacon.

See the 30 knot gust at about 14:30? That's what hit us as we were rounding the corner. No wonder we were moving quickly!

Just to round things off nicely, freeflow into the marina began just as we were arriving, so we even missed the usual weekend afternoon queues, yay!

White Horses

The forecast winds duly turned up on Saturday morning, with 20-25 knots blowing in from the West. The skies looked pleasant though, with plenty of blue sky in between the scudding clouds, so off we set for our latest attempt to actually go somewhere.

We didn't have the most auspicious start - for the second time I had to get an unsuspecting passer-by to hold onto the bow of the boat so we could actually turn her up the fairway. (Moonshine only wants to turn her bow to the right when going backwards. All the berths we've been in so far have involved a left turn to get out. Add a wind from her stern to this and there's no way she's going to turn in the right direction). Once we got into the lock we got a stern telling off because we'd inadvertantly jumped the locking out queue. In the time between me listening to the VHF traffic to and from the marina and actually setting off, they'd started the usual wait-for-your-number-to-be-called routine. Ah well, I apologised profusely and it saved us an hour's queueing, so hey-ho.

Disappointingly not much to report from our intrepid passage to the wilds of Cowes. We had the tide with us all the way, but the wind absolutely on our nose, so we got plenty of tacking practice and plenty of water over the decks. Mark looks like a natural on the helm, though. I'm not 100% sure where we were just here. We don't look at quite the angle that we spent most of the trip.



Just to prove that we actually got some distance from Chichester this time, here's Portsmouth complete with Spinnaker Tower on the left and a Napoleonic fort in the foreground.


We eventually arrived in Cowes at about 5:00, rafting up at East Cowes Marina on the outside of four spiffy 42 foot yachts, and definitely looking like the poor relations. On our return from the pub we were greeted by the owner of Teflon II, who we'd tied up to. He was most put out that the marina had dared to tie up a 27' boat next to his 42' Moody, claiming that we were scraping his sides. (We weren't, I'd checked for two hours before we headed pub-wards and even moved his fenders lower to make sure that we weren't). He should have been pleased that the contrast with Moonshine was making his boat look even flashier than it was.

Racehorses

A three day weekend with lots of stuff planned, but Missy wasn't feeling well so Plan B had to be put into effect. Missy stayed and home and watched old movies for three days, with Clemmie the sea-dawg hanging up her lifejacket for the weekend to keep her company. Paul down to the boat with old mate Mark with some serious wind forecast for the weekend.

We were civilised on Saturday and got booted and suited for a day at Goodwood races. Here's a picture of the people there. I didn't bother with any pictures of horses, because all the ones that I put money on came in some hours after the rest of the field. All, that is, except the one which was leading all the way round until a couple of feet from the finish line. At which point the horse that Mark had backed got itself half a nostril's length in front. Hmmph.

Still, it was all in all a good day, despite Missy's absence.

Fair winds

Sunday was a lovely day for sailing. Up at 8am, walked the dawg and got a newspaper, cooked bacon rolls and coffee, tidied the boat and snook out of the marina towards the end of free flow so the tide was with us. (About the first time we've managed that trick - we've spent a lot of time going the wrong way so far!)

To be honest, we didn't do much, but it was a very nice day to be on the water not doing much.

Mark seemed to like it, anyway.










How about this for a fine, upstanding crew?




So all in all a very pleasant weekend. We didn't make the Isle of Wight this time, but there's always next time!

There are a few more pictures here. (Sailing, plus a few others.)

In which Missy finally enjoys a day on the water.

There has been a conspicuous lack of on-the-water pics and stuff over the past few weeks, because we haven't been anywhere. We're being very cautious when there's just the two of us and the wind's been slightly too strong to venture out.

This weekend, however, we had reinforcements in the shape of publican-to-be Mark. The plan was to head off to Cowes on Saturday for our first proper sail. Unfortunately nose to tail traffic on the M3 meant that Mark didn't arrive until 2pm, so we missed our slot in the lock (even after the massive two hour wait for 30 boats to get through!) Fortunately, Mark arrived just in time for them to call us to let us know that we'd made our way back to the top of the queue

We didn't fancy risking getting into Cowes as darkness was falling, so it was a motor up the harbour and then a sail sorting run for an hour or so before sailing back.

With a bit of tweaking, Moonshine actually sails rather nicely. It looks rather splendid all goosewinged out. If there are any proper sailors reading, Mark did manage to get the kinks out of the main eventually.

Even the sea-dawg seemed to enjoy it.



Saturday evening was very pleasant. The queues to get back into Chichester Marina were as long as those trying to get out, so it was getting late when we finally got tied up. Fortunately, we were the last-but-one group to order food before the exhausted kitchen staff at the Crown & Anchor at Dell Quay put up the shutters for the night. They'll be praying for rainy, miserable weather over there before the summer's out.

We'd walked to the pub but, after a few pints, the return journey wasn't looking like much fun. Unbelievably, the landlord offered us a lift home when we asked him if he knew if any local taxis would take us and the sea-dawg. What a nice man!

Fat bloke berates dog

This one's apropos of nothing at all, but I'd say it's time for that bloke to go on a diet.

Not the run of the mill stroll

There I was, yelling at Clem to stay out of the mud while we were on our way from the Marina to Dell Quay for a quick half or six, when these came over the horizon....




Scared the bejayzus out of us.

Turns out they were doing a private display for a wedding party. Some wedding!

They were still doing their stuff as we arrived at the Crown and Anchor. This is their penultimate fly-past.



Nifty capture of them passing the setting sun, eh? Very artistic, I thought.


As a comparison, here's Clemmie's Earobatics on a windy evening.





All on a mobile phone of course, so not the greatest quality.

I'd actually got the phone out to take a picture of these, because we'd been wondering what kind of crop it was in the field.

Polite Pavla

Pavla's normally such a nice girl. I guess we can blame the hot evening and lack of sleep, rather than the several Fosters for this.....

All Stations, All Stations.....

Phew - legal. I finally did the VHF radio course at the weekend, so I can now use the VHF on the boat almost legally. (I can't actually licence the radio itself until I get my certificate). I can now look forward to happy days requesting radio checks from Solent Coastguard on Channel 16 like everyone else. Hurrah.

Positano pics

A few more Positano pics are here on fotopic.net. Not very good, but they're from my phone. The digi camera batteries died after two hours on the first morning and I'd forgotten a) spare batteries b) the charger.

A question: How come my phone can take pictures for days on end, while also managing to work out where we are in the world, make phone calls and access the internet, while my Fuji camera lasts for about three pictures before expiring while being expected to do nothing but capture images?

Pompeii

Saturday was Pompeii, a hell on earth of scalding heat and choking ash. It must have been pretty bad in 79AD when Vesuvius erupted too.

A late-June day with the thermometer up in the 90's and not a cloud in the sky is probably not the best time to go and visit Pompeii. The preservation of a first century city is incredible, and it's a wonderful, wonderful place, but it's a hard slog in the sunshine. The numerous Pompeii dogs have the right idea, find a shady corner under a tree and wait until the sun goes down.

The Picnics in the Harbour recommendation is to go in September when it's probably easier to appreciate the insite into life almost 2000 years ago that the city provides.

OK, philistines that we are, the high spot of today was dinner at Ristorante Max back in Positano.

We ate in the garden, the surroundings were lovely, the service attentive, the local wine chilled and delicious, and the fish soup like this.

Positano - Friday

23rd June 2006

Not much to report about Friday. A late start, a meander down towards the beach, only interrupted by a stop for caffe and pizze in the lovely garden of the nearest restaurant and a little light exploration of the town. Shopping heaven if you like lace and shiny stuff on your clothes.

We eventually found ourselves down on the beach where we spent the afternoon people-watching. The bay is obviously a popular stopping off spot for super yachts, so it's a great place to try and play spot the celeb. Our only hit for the weekend was Peter Weller (Robocop, 24) who was getting married on the Sunday, ah well.