Elbow Grease

The number of days before Moonshine is due back in the water is rapidly reducing, so I had to shake off the winter blues and get myself down to Chichester to get her ready. Any work on the deck can wait until she's back in the water, but anything that's going to be close to or under water has to be done pretty much now.

The bottom was power washed when she came out, most of the sea life was blasted off. After two years in the water though, she was looking a bit sad and grubby.




I'd intended to start work at the beginning of February, but the usual inertia meant that it was February 16th when I actually started. However, after two weekends of hard graft, a liberal spattering of blue antifoul and bleeding fingers and knuckles, she now looks like this:





I'm very pleased with myself at the transformation. I wasn't really expecting to get such good results.

There are a few more jobs to be done. Another coat of antifoul on the rudder and the front of the keel. I need to check the mast electrics before it goes back on, and I want to fit a proper ladder at the back, but so far, so good!

High and Dry

Well, we had a call yesterday to say that Moonshine's out of the water, so it must officially be winter.

I'm champing at the bit to see her so that I can discover how much work we have to do before she can go back in again, but it's all busy, busy at the moment, so it looks like it will be at least two weeks before we get down there.

Anyway, the sea dawg will have to endure a few days like this:




Before she gets days like this:



On the bright side, we're only 25 days before the earliest sunset of the year, so it'll soon be spring :-)

Ready For Winter

Well, that's about it until March 2008. Moonshine's sails are at Arun Sails to be washed and repaired. I've been down and put in clean engine oil, the mast electrics have been disconnected, the water tank is empty, the bedding and crockery are waiting to go into the attic.

Today, Chris Holman is taking down the mast and tomorrow she's being lifted out of the water for the winter. Between now and March we need to get her polished, repainted and anti-fouled and do some general repairs to various holes and scrapes around the deck, plus replace the teak grab rails. We're going to be very busy, especially as we're re-doing the living room at home.

Our next sailing will be somewhat warmer. We'll be limin' in the BVI in March for a couple of weeks of conch fritters, lobster, sun, sea and too much rum. We've chartered this rather pretty Beneteau 323.



In a nice coincidence, she's named "Sunshine", so we should feel at home.

Dawg Heaven

Nothing to do with boats, but the first mate has had to work from the office recently, so the sea dawg has acquired a dog-walker for a couple of days a week.

She snoozes most of the time we're away, but now she gets woken up, whisked into the back of a Honda estate with eight other waggy, excited dogs, gets to run around the woods with her very own pack for a couple of hours, before being deposited home and snoozing until we get back.

I'm trying to work out what she must make of her new, exciting life. It must be like some doggy vision of paradise. Or does it seem like one of her dreams when she's fast asleep but twitching and woofing, presumably chasing cats and squirrels?

Smash and Grab.

We thought that the trip with Mark and Helen was probably the last of the season, but when Saturday dawns bright and sunny, what can you do?

Up at 8am, out by 10:00, on the boat by 11:15, out at the beginning of freeflow, a lovely sail down to Bembridge with the sun shining and an East wind giving us a very kind broad reach. We were the last fin keel boat into Bembridge at around 3:30pm. We had plenty of water under the keel, but the water was really streaming out at 2 hours after high water.

We rafted up against two very nice boats with very understanding couples who didn't mind a dappy boxer trampling all over the place and Clemmie was gambolling on the dunes in the sunshine by 4pm.

We had a couple of glasses of pink wine (Last of the summer wine?) and headed up the hill to St Helens for dinner and the rugby. Watching the rugby more in hope than expection, it was a very happy pair of us who headed back down the hill in the dark a few hours later. (Ha - the head torch wasn't so silly now, was it?).

Sunday was just as wonderfully warm and sunny, so we had a really lovely morning, fetching the papers, coffee and rolls in the sunshine, a walk on the beach and away by 11:30.

The wind wasn't quite as kind to us on the way back and we had to motor from a couple of miles West of East Head, but the sun was still shining, the sea was blue and it really felt like August. We scraped in at the very end of freeflow and were home for tea by 6pm.

One of the nicest weekends we've had. I guess the feeling that we were somehow cheating by being out there so unexpectedly made it all the sweeter.

Stolen Weekend.

Last year, we didn't manage to get out in Moonshine after the August Bank Holiday. Missy was recovering from surgery and the October weather was awful, I had the woodwork off for varnishing by mid month. This year, however, we've had two fantastic weekends to finish the season.

We'd arranged a weekend out with Mark and Helen some time ago for October 6th and 7th. I wasn't expecting much from the weather given the time of year, but it looks like 2007 will be remembered for the terrific weather at either end of the season and not much in the middle.

We travelled down on Friday evening (Ship at Itchenor, fish n chips x 2)to get things fettled so that we'd be ready to get out early, with Mark and Helen coming down early on Saturday. The ulterior motive was to get to Cowes in time to see the Rugby World Cup 1/4 final match against Australia.

We had a very pleasant sail over to Cowes with brilliant sunshine and the wind almost cooperating. From the East, which made things nice and calm, but with a few shifts making it hard to avoid the occasional gybe (mostly planned ones, but a couple of "oops" ones). I did cheat a bit, motoring for the last few miles to make sure we got to see some rugby.

Apple, Banana, Carrot, Desk, Elephant, Frog, Giraffe, Hotel, Iguana, Jellybeans, Kangol flat cap......I got sucked into Missy's favourite travelling game somehow. I'll never get those out of my memory now.

We just about managed to squeeze onto a pontoon at East Cowes. We had to reverse in and had about 3 metres of Moonshine alongside and 5 sticking out the front. I was going to suggest to the nice marina people that we should only pay 1/2 price, but they were already grumbling that they weren't making any money because it's now winter rates, so I thought I'd better not push my luck.

We actually got to see most of the second half of England's shock win against the Aussies at the Lifeboat Inn. (surprisingly good, I'm always a bit suspicious of any pub built in the last 100 years or so). It was very pleasant sitting in the sunshine on the terrace watching the boats go by and smirking about putting the Aussies out of the World Cup.

Dinner was, predictably, at the Folly. We took the Folly water bus down there for the first time, which was pretty cool. I'm not sure why, but the trip made eating down there feel something of an adventure. The Folly was busy, but the extremely efficient waitress found us a table while we had a beer on the terrace.

Clemmie got very spoiled with leftover ham and lamb, so much so that she wouldn't eat her kibble and was really rather ill on Sunday. Ooops, bad dog-parents.

The crew were a bit lethargic on Sunday morning. I'd showered and taken Clemmie for a walk into East Cowes to get a newspaper before I could rouse anyone else. Shocking behaviour. I wonder if bringing back the lash is an option?

I abandoned my plan of filling up with diesel because the fuel dock was busy, reasoning that we'd got enough fuel to get us home unless there was absolutely no wind and we had to motor the whole way, and the chances of that were so remote as to be laughable.

Anyway, we put into Gosport at about 2:45pm to fill her up, which was nice. We got to see the Spinnaker tower at close quarters and everything. The crew were very understanding about the whole thing and didn't spend the entire journey back giving me grief about it, oh no.

Anyway, after our slight detour into Portsmouth Harbour, we got back into Chichester just as free-flow started, so that was OK.

So, a hugely enjoyable, warm, sunny October weekend. It really did feel like we were getting something for nothing.

September Week IV - Home

Not much to report on the way back to Chichester. After a leisurely breakfast we headed out into the river, very conscious of the shiny big boats all around us and the ebbing tide. We felt that we were disturbing the peace with the engine, so we got the genoa up to give us some steering, turned the engine off and just drifted down on the tide.



We had just enough wind to get us home, although we had the engine on around Cowes to avoid a huge number of kevlar sails milling around. After that, it was pretty much like this all the way back to Chichester.


All in all, a great week of fairly undemanding sailing in pleasant weather. We got to Lymington, Newtown and Beaulieu for the first time before heading back, which means we've done most the "destination" places in the Solent now.

September Week III - A Spot of Yachting.

Lymington-Beaulieu is barely a sail at all, so we were able to spend the morning in Lymington. Missy needed some contact lens solution. (She found out the painful way that the bottle she'd brought along was contact lens cleaner, not saline) and we needed to order some flowers for my mum's birthday on the Thursday.

I'd always mentally got Lymington down as a dull, grey town, so was surprised to see that it's colourful and bustling. It took me a while to work out that the only two times I've been there previously were in the evening out of season in April.

I said that Lymington - Beaulieu is barely a sail at all. This about sums it up:


The Beaulieu River is surrounded by the New Forest and is stunningly tranquil and beautiful. It's been owned by the Montagu family for centuries and development has been kept to a minimum, although Bucklers Hard was once a major shipbuilding centre when ships were made of oak, and was active as recently as WWII when parts of the Mulberry floating docks used in the Normandy landings were built there.

Once you get past the spit at the river entrance, channel markers become decidedly low-tech.



The marina is the opposite to Lymington, it's small and peaceful. On second thoughts they're not exactly opposite, they're both similarly and frighteningly expensive.

We headed over to the Master Builder pub at Bucklers Hard for a couple of drinks before we ate. On a calm and warm late summer evening, there can't be many nicer places to sit and listen to your dog beg for treats.



We even had the treat of encountering Tom Cunliffe holding court at the bar. Tom's probably the nearest thing to a British sailing celeb that we have. Apparently he'd been doing "A spot of yachting" that day, which I guess we were doing too. His boat, Westernman, is moored just down the river and is really rather beautiful.


Despite appearances, she's only ten years old, being built for Tom in the style of a Bristol pilot cutter.

All in all a very pleasant day indeed, although we did spend more time in the pub than actually sailing, but you can't be an intrepid adventurer every day.

Oh, and we actually cooked on the boat for once. Pasta, meatballs, salad and a very nice red.

September Week II - Cowes to Lymington

The weather really improved on Tuesday. The contrast with our last trip West of Cowes in July (ripped genoa, broken traveller) was stark.

It's not really a full day's trip to Lymington from the Folly, although it was nice and relaxing. It did mean that we had time to stop off in Newtown Creek for lunch. There was barely a breath of wind by now, and we had to put a tarpaulin up to shade Clemmie, but it was beautiful and there was even a spare mooring buoy to pull up to, so we didn't even have to break our duck on anchoring.




If we didn't have Clemmie on board we could have stayed all day, but we made the short trip to Lymington for the night. We sailed most of the way, but as we approached Lymington, we came across a matched racing fleet of Beneteau 40.7's, doing the most weirdly complex course. (Up/Down/Up/Down past the first buoy/Across/etc.

With the wind getting up and not much chance of predicting what they were going to do, we got the sails down and motored around them and on into Lymington, following the Yarmouth Ferry in.

We didn't have the greatest of berths at the Berthon marina, being right up against the wall. It was convenient, but a bit industrial, all concrete and cranes. It won't be our first choice next time we head over there. The Town Quay looks more fun, although we'd have to be there fairly early to avoid rafting a long way out.

First choice for dinner was the recently renovated Ship Inn. Trouble is, it's not dawg-friendly and the place is a long way up itself. Overly primped and preened, with bored-looking waiting and barstaff. We declined the opportunity to sit outside and, after a quick recce up the hill, found the Kings Head. The sign in the window saying "Dogs Welcome" was reassuring and we were very happy in a traditional local boozer with decent food and beer and friendly staff.

September Week. I - Chichester to Cowes.

Not quite a a week, more than a long weekend, but at last we had some decent weather and a few days off to use it.

Reasons to buy a boat - 103

If you stay at home, you may be tempted to change the brake pads on your car to save money.



You get filthy and tweak a muscle in your back. It's worth paying someone else.

But anyway, we travelled down to the boat on Sunday, intending to head off to the Folly for dinner. It was supposed to be F3-4 according to the board at the marina. That's not what it felt like as we rounded Chichester Bar at about 3pm and realised that we'd have the wind on the nose and a nasty 1 metre chop for the five hours or so to Cowes.

Missy looked awfully relieved when I suggested that we turned straight around and had fish and chips at the Ship instead!

Our second attempt was much smoother. We still had a decent breeze on Monday morning, so kept the main reefed down, but the sea was much flatter and the sun started to shine, so it turned out to have been a good decision.


I was feeling so confident that I decided that I was going to sail down to the Folly with the wind behind us. Fortunately I remembered the chain ferry before we got into the river. There would have been much chaos and panic on Moonshine if it pulled out in front of us, so the sails came down pretty quickly!

We parked on the visitor's pontoon about twenty minutes before the water taxi started up, so Clemmie had to cross her legs for a while, since she's still not prepared to wee on anything but solid, dry land, preferably with a nice patch of grass.

Dinner was great. A huge piece of ham hock for Missy, which was big enough for Clemmie to get the leftovers as a treat in each meal for the next three days.

Pavla and Tomas. August 11th-12th

With the first mate in North Carolina administering to her convalescing mom, it looked like this weekend was going to be a wash out. I'd planned on going down to the boat with the sea dawg to do a bit of work on Moonshine, but mainly to go and drink beer.

However, with the start of the football season, Nick was committed to spending the weekend at work on the Premier League website, so Pavla and her young cousin Tomas were at a loose end, so they got press ganged into going down to Moonshine for the weekend.

Pavla was working on Saturday morning, so that left us a shortened weekend, so we were never going to get very far from the dock. The weather was kind, so we had a nice walk around the harbour to Dell Quay, so Clemmie could get her usual amount of fussing and attention at the Crown and Anchor.


Sunday free-flow was ideal for getting a novice crew out into the harbour without minimum fuss. After scaring them both with a safety briefing, we headed out with the intention of getting the two landlocked Czechs out to the "open sea" wherever that may be!

In the end we decided that the Bar Beacon must qualify for that accolade and fortunately, we had just enough time to motor out there, spin around and return to the dock about 10 minutes before the end of free-flow.

Tomas was a star, a definite sailor in the making. He steered most of the way back to the marina and handled the fenders and mooring ropes with confidence. I hope he wasn't too disappointed that we didn't get the sails up, but the harbour was as crowded as I've seen it and with a fair breeze, I didn't want too push our luck too far.

Oh, and I managed to fix the broken traveller piece. It's amazing what you can do with a hammer! Good job too. There's still no sign of a replacement from RWO's distributors.

Goodwood and Picnics - August 4th-5th

The beginning of August is one of the last events of the English summer season, the Goodwood Festival meeting - Glorious Goodwood, so we donned our best summer threads and headed off with Mark and Helen.

Lord March hasn't been impressed with the standard of dress and behaviour and, to be honest, neither were we. By and large most people made the effort, but there were too many charabanc-loads of lads and lasses out to drink as much as they could without too much interest in it being a race meeting. It's also a victim of its own success in that it's practically impossible to circulate from parade ring to bookies, to the course and to the bars, simply due to the number of people.

Next year we'll be taking the panama hat and linen suit into the Richmond enclosure for either the July or August bank holiday meeting. Fewer people and fewer drunks.

Ooeee, smokin'!



Perhaps I'd have been less jaundiced about the day if I'd actually backed some horses that could manage more than a gentle trot around the course!

Anyway, we had a very pleasant meal at the Cider House restaurant in Apuldram, and on Sunday we took the advice of a very nice couple who we met in Yarmouth in July and took Moonshine up to Thorney Channel, where we grabbed a vacant buoy and had a very pleasant picnic in the harbour in a wonderful, peaceful spot.

On the way back to the main Chichester channel, in another little coincidence, we passed by the couple in their boat "Arrival", just coming back in to their mooring.

Wild Week. July 7th-14th. pt II

So, it was Thursday morning and the weather forecast was diabolical and looking to get worse. It was clear we weren't going to be going to Poole with rather bedraggled boat, but were we going to be able to get home? Should we wait until the forecast looked better or make a run for it? We eventually decided that we'd head off just before the tide changed and see how far we could comfortably reach before we had enough. Swanwick (Premier marina and therefore free for us as visitors) was potential stop number one and Gosport (same again!) was number 2.

The first hour out was slow going under the genoa only, with the tide against us, but was much calmer since we were travelling downwind.



Summer sailing, gotta love it!

As we approached Cowes, it became obvious that we weren't going to need Swanwick. With the wind and tide behind us we were doing a minimum of 6.5 knots over the ground. We even risked putting up a (very reefed) main. The sun came out as we came past Cowes and it actually turned into a very pleasant day for a sail.

Clemmie had had enough of the whole thing by now though, and had taken to her bed!



Anyway, we passed Portsmouth Harbour by 5pm, so we didn't need Gosport. We passed West Pole on our way into a wonderfully peaceful and deserted Chichester Harbour at about 6pm and were tied up by 7:30 after one of our best sails ever, following our worst the day before.

By 8pm we were in the Ship at Itchenor enjoying what felt like an extremely well-deserved dinner.

Wild Week. July 7th-14th. pt I

OK, it's July. That means we're safe booking a week away on the boat and enjoying some fine weather. We may even get across to Poole if we're feeling brave.

Huh. As if.

We went down to the boat on Saturday evening with the intention of heading out on Sunday morning. Sunday was a little too wild and windy, as was Monday. We did have some great fish and chips at the Ship at Itchenor, but it wasn't quite what we were supposed to be doing.

Eventually on Tuesday, things calmed down and we headed out towards Cowes. Not much to report, really. The wind was on the nose, so we had to motor all the way. We had the Folly visitors pontoons to ourselves and had the novelty of having to get the dinghy blown up to cross back and forth across the river. Clemmie didn't seem to fazed by being in there, although once the water taxi started operating at 6pm, she obviously much preferred that. I'm glad we bought the old 3 metre Avon rather than a newer, smaller dinghy. I was grateful for the extra space and stability.

On Wednesday we headed out towards Yarmouth. At first things went well. We were a bit late setting off, because of walking the dawg, so that we only had a small window with the tide in our favour, but that didn't seem too much of a problem with only 11 miles to travel.

The wind was still coming from the West, but with a decent breeze and the tide with us, we were able to make good progress with tacks across to the Beaulieu river and down to Newtown as we tacked away from Newtown, though, we hit the first of our problems. The breeze was getting stronger and we decided to call it a day with the sails and finish the trip with the motor. Unfortunately, the genoa didn't want to furl and it took a good three or four minutes to get it put away, by which time the leech of the sail was looking very tattered. We continued with the wind getting stronger, the waves getting higher and the tide now completely against us.

I'd left the main sail up for stability, but after about 30 minutes, there was a bang and the boom and mainsheet were suddenly flapping free. After we managed to get things back under control and the mainsheet lashed down, I realised that the U shaped piece connecting the main sheet block to the traveller was now a nice J shape. Great!

We eventually limped into Yarmouth harbour with things pretty wild and windy. There were a few bedraggled looking people on the pontoon that evening!


Next day we were able to take stock of the damage. Fortunately the only thing damaged on the genoa was the UV strip. The stitching had just unravelled as the sail flogged while I tried to winch it in.



Somehow someone had managed to put the traveller in place with the retaining pin under the shackle out of alignment, so that only one side was secured. I'm surprised it had lasted as long as it did, to be honest.

Bizarre aside:

In the evening, we took the water taxi across the harbour to go and have some dinner. As we walked up the steps, a female voice called, "Paul Hughes?" I looked round and it was my cousin, Pam. This wasn't so very odd, because she lives in Freshwater, but I haven't seen her for years. What was odd was that she was there because she was waiting for my other cousin, Mick, and his wife to arrive on the ferry. Mick and Lynne live in Australia and I haven't seen them for about twenty five years or more. They were on a flying visit to visit Pam on their way to France, so in an astonishing coincidence, we all found ourselves at the same spot at the same time. We had a ten minute conversation and then went our own ways. Weird.

Whitstable and Canterbury June 28th-30th.

Not much sailing got done for the rest of June, with the weather being wet, windy and miserable. Missy's mom came over for the last two weeks and we mainly sat watching it rain, ugh.

We did venture out to spend a couple of days in Whitstable dodging the showers, though and can highly recommend the original Wheeler's restaurant on the High Street. Still called Wheelers, although not part of the chain. It's a wonderfully quirky little place, with a seafood bar at the front and five tables in a 12'x12' room at the back. There's no drinks licence, but there's a Thresher's opposite. The food is absolutely wonderful.



We managed to see Canterbury Cathedral in between the downpours. It's an amazingly historic and beautiful building, but we decided that the stone carving at Southwell Minster is better :-)



Canterbury really is a beautiful city and we must get back there one day when we actually get a proper summer. I'm not sure about the standard of build of some of the houses there, though.

Black Holes and Red Arrows. June 9-10th.

With the weather in May being pretty dismal, our next trip out of the harbour was to the IOW on the festival weekend of June 8th-10th. We wanted to head down to The Folly for the night and we knew that things would be busy because of the Festival, so we slipped away from Chichester at 7:00am, much earlier than our usual later-than-we-intended time away.

It was a beautiful still morning as we headed down the harbour. For once the water wasn't churned up by all the day's activity and it was lovely having the glassy water to ourselves.

The wind was very hit and miss as we headed along the Solent as sea breezes began to fill in on both the island and the mainland. Coming up towards Osbourne House with the wind behind us, we were treated to the slightly worrying sight of a fleet of Sunsail boats racing towards us with their spinnakers flying. Fortunately it gave us opportunity to get the main sheet hauled in before the inevitable gybe.



Inevitably, the Folly visitors pontoons were busy. Our early start meant that wthe pontoons were full of boats on a lunch stop, which led to some interesting organisation and re-organisation as boats on the inside of the rafts had to get out. I'm still wondering if the Irish boat on the outside of four noticed that the boat inside of him wasn't the one that was there when he'd left for lunch.

As the afternoon turned to early evening, we were treated to a fantastic display by the Red Arrows, performing for the festival, but often being directly over us. It really was an awesome free show on the few really hot and sunny days of June.



Dinner at the Folly was eaten to a soundtrack of Amy Winehouse and we drifted off to sleep with the sound of Muse's Black Holes and Revelations coming over the water. Pretty cool.

Apparently it was somewhat crowded on the water down towards Newport. This was taken in the afternoon, before the crowds really started to arrive.





Returning home the next day, we had a great sail back to Chichester, with sunshine and a nice South Westerly breeze giving us a reach for most of the day. Things changed dramatically as we passed by the forts and the submarine barrier, though. A thick sea fret rolled in, reducing visibility to just a few tens of metres where we were and, apparently, less behind us. We could hear the horns of the ferries in the Solent, but headed past Hayling Island without seeing anything very much at all.

Amazingly, the thick mist only made it a few hundred yards onshore and we were in bright sunshine as we passed the Winner bank, very odd.

Tarbert 2007: Peace, Love and Reefing.

Well, we're back safely from Tarbert after finishing slightly above our usual bringing-up-the-rear position in 10th place out of 13. Generally, the view looked something like this:



This year's crew in the evocatively-named Sunsail 76 were skipper Ken, plus us two, Cheryl, Bisi and Mark, plus two Beryl Bravo lads, Paul and Angus. The weather was fairly lively at times, particularly on Sunday afternoon. The BBC was reporting gusts of around 36 knots, so it got a bit bumpy. Great sailing weather, but not really in the spirit of picnics in he harbour!

Saturday night was more surreal than usual. Here's the crew all dressed up in our best hippy gear for the Saturday night fancy dress.



We're outside the Anchor Hotel in Tarbert in the picture. Inside, the decoration in the bar was different to last year, with the ceiling covered in draped cloth. Very exotic, we thought. As it began to rain outside, though, it became apparent that the cloth wasn't there for decoration, but instead to prevent dust and dirt covering the bar while the roof was being replaced. We were soon trying to find spots inside where we weren't being dripped on, while the staff tried to find enough mops and buckets to keep the floor reasonably dry. An odd evening.

Sunday was an interesting day's sailing, with strong winds at the beginning, lightening during the middle, and strengthening again in the afternoon, so that we entered Kip Marina with the weather blowing an absolute hooley.

Missy was suitably dressed for anything that the weather could throw at us.

Tarbert time

This coming weekend will have a change of scenery. We're heading up to Scotland for the annual ExxonMobil Tarbert Challenge. This year's event will have 13 boats and over 100 people competing (sort of) for a range of trophies loosely based on a weekend of racing from Largs to Tarbert and back.

If the last few years are anything to go by, we'll be watching the rest of the fleet heading off into the distance. It'll be fun though.

This is last year's finely-tuned racing crew.

Hard Labour.

Three weeks ago we used some wire wool to get the worst of the corrosion off of the samson post at the front of the boat. It seemed to work, so all well and good.

The trouble is that wire wool is made of iron and after a couple of weeks of salty sea air, all the tiny little flecks of wire that I'd washed over the side when we cleaned up, are now tiny little flecks of rust, bleeding all down the side of the boat.

So, this weekend was one of hard labour. We went down to the boat on Saturday afternoon and I spent a couple of hours working up a sweat t-cutting and polishing the cockpit. Missy and Clemmie spent an equally industrious couple of hours dozing on the top of the coachroof in the sunshine. The poor things were exhausted at the end of it.

Katharine Henry ACMA. came down to see us on Saturday evening, carrying a welcome bottle of pink fizz to celebrate the addition of those last four letters after her name. (She's now officially a Chartered Management Accountant), so I was allowed to stop working my fingers down to stubs to share in the celebration, Yay.

The wind and tides were all wrong this weekend to do anything very interesting (low tide mid-afternoon, brisk winds on Saturday), but we had a pleasant little sail around the harbour on Sunday morning to work up an appetite for lunch, we got the sails up on the way to Itchenor and headed in a stately starboard tack fashion through the massed ranks of racing dinghys, enjoying the experience of actually having some of them being the give way boat occasionally.

We sailed down just past East Head and were going to try and sail back, but with the wind wandering through 180 degrees at times and the tide ebbing pretty quickly, we motored back up to the marina. Not very exciting, but at least the sun shone and Katharine got to see more than Pontoon F.


Then it was back to more hard labour for me to try and get those rust marks out of Moonshine's sides. So the dinghy got inflated and I spent the next couple of hours bobbing around with a pan scourer and t-cut. (Actually Liquid Rubbing, especially made for boats and therefore three times the price). I got most of the marks off eventually, but that's the last time that wire wool gets used on Moonshine!

Another Sunny Sunday.

Bembridge was a great place to be for an early Sunday morning. The tide times meant that we wanted to be away by about 1pm, so we were up early (for us) to have time to enjoy where we were.

The view from the end of the pontoon was like this:



and a walk along the dunes and around a headland took us to this spot.



What you can't see of course is that Clemmie was full of seawater by this point - stupid dog.

It didn't seem to affect her too much as she enjoyed her new favourite spot on the boat.


We eventually got away at about 2pm, part of the mass exodus of the harbour as the tide rises and just squeezed into Chichester before the end of freeflow, in our usual state - tired but happy.