4 Kidneys and a Wonky Leg

Well here we are at last, all ready to go, complete with lucky penny, Hag stone and black cat(not real). Having told you all I thought the boat was ready. It’s come back and kicked me in the shins. I have discovered a small oil leak from a rubber seal linking the propeller drive leg to the boat. This will need replacing before long, and that will involve either lifting the boat out or beaching her somewhere. its a relatively simple job but you can’t really do it afloat. It’s a busy time of year for boatyards, so haul out would lose us too much time. A tempory fix will be applied before we set off and constantly monitor until we are confident that we can continue with our journey and apply the repair later in the trip.

So to passage no 1

Route, weather and tide are as follows, (pictures paint a thousand words, click to enlarge.) I won’t bore you with too many details each post.

So it looks like we will be motoring a lot, but it’s a sunny day. We plan to leave at 11.00 to catch the tide at Wareham. We be at Poole Entrance around 12.30. but then we are have a foul tide the rest of the way.

Thank for all your best wishes on facebook and Instagram.

Well we left on time, having done the temporary repair to the oil seal. Glorious sunshine but cold wind to Poole entrance, and off down the fairway. Wellwishers on the beach waving enthusiastically, Mark, Desney and Wendy making our exit feel special.

Just to keep us on our toes, the forecast NE wind was actually coming from the south West. So it was slow going all the way to the Needles channel where it finally died. It was 5pm we had been sailing 6 hours and over the transom I could still see home.

10 minutes later at Hurst Castle the gentle NE wind finally made an appearance, at 25kts. I always used to swear by Windfinder but couldn’t have got it more wrong today.

Finally anchored up at 7pm in Newtown Creek.

Trip 28 miles