4 Kidneys and a Wonky Leg

Our walks to the Estuary mouth each day to view the sea had revealed some moderate conditions with many boats out sailing. Are we being too cautious?

The forecast weather although unchanged isn’t any worse than the previous few days. We are seasoned sailors, and we’ve been out in worse than this, so enough of the easy life, Wednesday we will push on and tough it out!

To explain to non sailors who may read this, the situation is as follows. When a sailing boat needs to go upwind she must do so at an angle to the wind, which by simple trigonometry adds extra distance to the journey, typically 1.5 times the straight line distance. Dartmouth to Weymouth is about 60 miles, which at average 5 knots would take 12 hrs. Over that period the tidal stream will be against you for half of that time, slowing you down further. If winds are strong the waves build up, and these will also slow the boat down as the boat crashes through them. Then there’s dangerous places, like Portland Bill which should be rounded only at certain, safe times/states of the tide.

You may begin to understand why sailors hate sailing “upwind”.

All that and we’ve still decided to go.

Well, we left at 5am, in the dark and watched the sun rise spectacularly as we passed Start Point. We had six hours of strong wind to put up with and then the wind would calm down as we got to Portland, which we would round at slack water then north to Weymouth. As the morning progressed the wind grew, and was Force 7 when it was forecast F5 and to make progress we had to sail/motor SE and were pushed half way to Cherbourg before we could tack North, by now over two hours late on our schedule. This forced a change in passage plan as we would now have to take Portland at the wrong state of the tide.

The wind now died completely, and we motored against steadily increasing tides west of Portland. We caught the “back eddy” down to the point and rounded the Bill by about 100 metres. As we did so the wind kicked back in aiding the final part of the journey north to Weymouth the sun now setting as we came into the harbour. A bit of excitement as we are “buzzed” by a chinook helicopter on our way past Portland Harbour.

15 hrs, 75 miles and very tired and hungrey.

Only one more leg and we’re home.