RBI Log—-Final

A murky Solent beckoned as Graham, Jim Paul and I slipped from Lymington at 0645 on Saturday 31st July. Heads just a touch sore from a good meal and the odd bottle of wine (it’s never the even ones that get you) this was not the weather we had hoped for. We motored out down the Needles passage against a thick mist on the end of the ebb before turning East to run along to St Catts as the tide turned. 2000 miles to go, surely the weather must improve—it did and before long we were running before 15 kts of wind in sunshine. The tide increased as did the wind and we were doing 10 kts over ground as we passed St Catts with only one other yacht for company. With a spinnaker up we continued quickly for another 48 miles before increasing swell and wind of 25+ kts required us to drop it.

Past Beachy head and on towards Dungeness surfing up to 11.6 knots we continued into the night and then the wind dropped so we had to motor for 2 hours before it returned near Dover and with the tide we shot towards the Thames at 9 knots. In the first 24 hrs we logged 145 miles but then the wind dropped and we flew the Pig (asymmetric spinnaker) as we headed towards the east anglian coast.
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Posted: September 7th, 2010 under Sailing Report.
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