day 3

Overnighting at Swanage was a bit of an adventure. At about 4 am the mooring buoy that we were noted on started banging on the hull. Current seemed to be pushing us onto it but wind was doing is singing around it. Strange. Added a floating fender to stop the noise and then a few minutes later the anchor alarm went off as the wind changed and we sing post the buoy again. 
Was really hard to get back to s sleep again so not a great start to the day. 
We set off for Portland gybing a lot with a following wind.
All was going well until the wind basically died so we motored for the rest of the day.
The kids drove and we bopped along to ABBA.
Made it to Portland and got a nice berth in a really posh marina. Loads of turning room and big berths. Lovely.
Going to take a few days of here to recover and do a few boat jobs.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ARC Day 29. we arrived

Image
Sad to say it's been a long time for me to get round to this post. Durig the night we sailed alongside Mayol anoter ARC boat from Sweden and we decided to stay together fo rthe last leg. We could tell that our arrival would be after dark and we watched the sun go down over the sillouette of St Lucia that night. By about 8pm we had made it round the top of St Lucia with just 6 Nm to go. Our twin headsails were furled in and we could have put up the mainsail ofr this last stretch but we just couldn't face going up the front to unlock the halyard. We hadn't used the mainsail for the whole trip so had never unhooked the halyard from the reefing horns. We motored the last 6 miles and were super excited ton get VHF calls from friedns on re and Water Dogs already in the marina and hte anchorage. Christian from re was kind enough to come out on his dinghy with a flashing light to show us the way in - all the marina entrance light being defunct! Arrival was amazing - there was a hug...
Read more

Night passage to Puerto Rico 30-05-2022

Image
After waiting for the darned shipping company (Sevenstar) to finalise a date for weeks we have decided to go explore somewhere new. Puerto Rico is only 59Nm away and still part of the USA so it's off we are a sailing. It's just far enough that we can't wait make it comfortably by daylight with the light winds of next week. Hence we decided to do it as a night passage.  As we left Christmas Cove at 1838 hrs there was a huge rock the boat festival going on. We slipped our mooring to a thumping beat from the huge party stage boat. Nice to escape. Sad to say goodby the friends we have made there though. We are only planning a week in PR and then back to USVI which will be a n upwind passage but hey ho. As this is our first night passage for a while it's a bit bail biting. We spent most of the afternoon prepping and the tiller pilot gave us a fright by not starting up ( dirty connector) first time. Right now we are headig SW to pass the Island of Vieques in the early hours b...
Read more

25-2-2022 : a passage to BVI

Image
As of 1730 hrs today we have begun our last long Caribbean passage, from Antigua to the British Virgin Islands. It's a journey of about 180Nm so this means at least one overnight but probably two.  The wind forecast is for relatively light wind and wave and a mostly downwind passage.  We have stowed the dingy on deck (deflated) as towing it all this way is just asking to lose it at sea.  In theory, to check in at BVI we need covid tests but they have to be 48hours old (or less) and our passage time makes this a bit tricky. Instead we are planning to get tested at Road Town ferry terminal when we arrive before doing a customs clearance. Fingers crossed. This is one of the many cruise liners that passed us in the night. It's the Seven Seas Navigato.  When. One goes by they are so we'll lot up it's like a city arriving.  We made 6.5 knots all night which is great but the liners all do about twice that so they almost always come up from behind on shoppin...
Read more