We left Poole on Monday afternoon and headed for Lymington, where we arrived in time for some excellent fish and chips. We stayed in the Yacht Haven, rather than the Berthon, as they had room. My father used to keep a boat here in the late 90s that I used to sail regularly. The marina has expanded somewhat since then and is now the home to a lot of charter power boats as well as the local sailing boats. The size of the boats, especially the powerboats is surprising, especially after the French coast where we were on the big side, and big powerboats were very scarce. Not so here…
After a day in the marina (avoiding the 25kts blowing in the western Solent), and some grocery shopping, we made our way across to Yarmouth for a night, and dinner at the Beach Hut.
The plan had been to anchor in Colwell Bay, which is opposite Hurst spit on at the western end of the Island, just before the Needles. the restaurant runs a tender service and will collect you from your boat and deliver you ashore to your table. We’d been texted the day before our booking announcing that in light of the weather forecast they’d not be running the tender service, but would collect us from Yarmouth using their minibus or landrover. This was no surprise – in the forecast weather there was no way I was going to anchor in Colwell Bay, let alone spend a night there after a nice dinner.
The meal was lovely but twice the price of our Michelin starred meal in France, and whilst well prepared Kathryn thought that her fish was not as fresh as she’d become used to. It was, however, a lovely experience and a nice closing chapter to our trip.
We spent another day, Thursday, in Yarmouth to avoid more weather – a steady 38kts in the western Solent at one point, and made a very quick passage back to Birdham in 14-20kts on Friday. We arrived with just enough water to get to the lock and were on our berth by early afternoon. We did a quick tidy, grabbed the essentials and took the train back to our London flat, where we had a take away from our local, and excellent, Chinese, the River View.
Saturday saw us drive back down to the boat so we could load up with all the stuff to come off the boat and give her a proper clean before heading back to London on Sunday morning. We’d meant to have lunch at Itchenor sailing club with a friend from the club, but due to an ambiguous message exchange we thought he’d had to cancel and headed home. He’d meant that he couldn’t have lunch but would meet us for a drink… so we had a FaceTime chat once we were all back at our homes. He’s just had a hip replaced so I feel a bit guilty about having made him walk to the club and back. Nonetheless he’s invited me to apply to become a member of the Royal Cruising Club, which is a great honour. I may not make it through the selection process, but I’m rather pleased.