Surfer Chick

She may be an old bird but Robinetta was a surfer chick today.

Storm left early so we could move to the end of the pontoon.

We left Cowes at 10am and motor sailed past the forts. When our speed got to 5kts we turned the engine off and had a lovely, if a little rolly sail to the entrance to the Looe channel. The tide turned in our favour about mile out, proving Alison's hard work with the tidal stream atlas had been spot on.

Once in the channel we were sheltered by the sand and it went flat calm. Lovely. 

A couple of hours out from Brighton the waves started building. They got about 2m high with a few larger ones. Robinetta was sailing really well. We didn't really catch a wave and surf but we got a lot of lift. Worm, being towed behind really did surf, and overtook us a couple of times!

It was tiring but fun. We had fully reefed down as the wind got up but the tiller was still heavy so I rigged a purchase using Worm's mainsheet. It helped a lot.

As we got to Brighton, lots of the fleet caught us up, further vindicating our passage plan. Plum, Transcur, Maid of Tesa, Hussar, Drum of Drake and Gwenili all came in. Outside the harbour the seas were really bad and getting the sails down was very unpleasant, as was the horrid rolling motor in to the outer harbour. As each boat came in, those already in helped the next boat tie up. I spent a while helping Gwenili tie up. She is a heavy boat and the wind was pushing her in all the wrong directions. 

Alison and I had a lovely Chinese dinner and then a drink and a chat with Martin and Barry from Gwenili in the pub before turning in around midnight.