Chilled Weekend

Saturday wasn't much to write about. I spent a few hours on board and made myself busy by measuring the main sail, making lunch (beans & sausage on toast), listening to the radio, reading a book and generally chilling.

I invited Jim to tag along on Sunday and have a spot of lunch on board. The plan was to motor out of the harbour and see if there was any significant wind and do a spot of sailing.

Well, the wind wasn't there when we got out of the harbour. Bigger and better boats than us were struggling to make progress, so basically as soon as we got close to the Langstone fairway pile I cut the engine, hoisted the jib and announced we'd arrived at our lunch spot. :-)

What little wind there was eventually spun us round and there was just enough in it to allow the tiller pilot to keep us on course after a bit of a fettle with the gain settings.

So we happily abandoned any planning and just went with the flow and had lunch.

Jim had seafood:

I had a pie:

We spent most of the afternoon watching the bigger boats all come back in under motor one by one and a bunch of motorboaters looking like complete novices. One in particular refusing to trim his outboard and kept launching the boat skyward with a burst of throttle and then slap-slap-slapping the boat out into the Solent, only to return at crawling speed 5 minutes later when the occupants must have felt sick.

It took two hours to drift back into Langstone harbour, during which we finished lunch, people watched, had a chat with a chap in a small catamaran and generally had a really relaxing time.

The plan to abandon any and all plans was actually a good plan in the end. If you get what I mean.

No pressure, no tipping the boat on its side wanting more speed, just a leisurely drift into the harbour more or less under the control of the tiller pilot.

Eventually the tide turned against us and the knot or so we had at slack water ground to a halt and we ended up stationary against the flow of water.

So it was time to start the engine and motor round to the mooring, where we had another hour or or more having a natter and watching the world go by.

The stand at high water on Sunday was impressively long. So long that when we got bored and came ashore we didn't have to pull the dinghy up much of the beach at all.

I'd say this Sunday was the best day of the year so far. Okay I sailed the other weekend but for sheer pleasure, Sunday was just about as good as it gets.

This coming weekend involves moving my youngest from Uni back to his mum's in Oxford so that day is pretty full. It's also the Portsmouth Boat jumble on Sunday so it may not be a weekend on the boat.

I bet the weather will be excellent sailing weather, just you watch.....