

| | Solent
Area: Sunday 27 April -
Friday 3 May 2002
C & N Marina, Cowes, Lymington, Newtown River, Beaulieu River, Nab Tower,
Chichester Harbour, C&N Marina
(Click
on any of the photographs below to see a larger image)
The
plan for the trip was to spend five days in the Solent area with a crew
consisting of the two owners and a novice, John, who was a friend of
Malcolm's. We boarded Bagadeus on
Sunday evening with 35 knot winds blowing and high winds forecast for next
day. We waited until Monday afternoon and then made the short eight-mile
trip across the Solent to Cowes Yacht Haven, still with 30 knots and lumpy seas, conditions
which were not a good introduction to sailing for John. We
spent the next day in Cowes Yacht Haven waiting for the cold front to
pass.
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By the morning of
Wednesday we had post-cold-front blue skies and cumulus, with 25 knots of wind.
We took a brief trip up the Medina River as far as we had water, waiting for a
fair tide in the Solent, then had a splendid three-reef beat with a fair tide under
us to Lymington. John took video footage on this leg but, sadly, we have
no photographs.

Medina
River,
Helming instruction for John
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Medina
River
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Medina
River, Ferry ahead
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We stayed
overnight at Lymington Marina, then had gentle airs next morning (Thursday)
across to Newtown River for lunch.

Light
airs, Lymington to
Newtown River |

Lunch
in Newtown River
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Goose-winged,
Newtown River to Beaulieu River entrance
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With the skies darkening again we ran
across to the Beaulieu river, spending the night at Bucklers Hard Marina.

Concentration in
the
Beaulieu River |

Rain
in the Beaulieu River
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Snug
in Buckler's Hard Marina
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On the
final day, Friday, we departed Bucklers Hard at 05:00 in order to have water at the the river mouth. In fine sunny conditions we ran
across to
the gate in the Horse Sand obstruction wall, then sailed down to the Nab Tower
and back to Chichester Harbour, anchoring for lunch in the anchorage behind East
Head.

Osborne
House from the water
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Goosewinged,
John inspecting the bows
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On
a run to the Nab,
John and David
in the cockpit |
A final
motor-sail took us back home to Camper and Nicholson's.
It had
been a varied set of
conditions to introduce John to Solent cruising. He seemed to enjoy it - we hope
so anyhow, and we hope to see him again sometime.

Some
details of parts of the rig at that time are shown below for interest. On
the left is the boom end with preventer line rigged. Centre is detail from
the bows showing the preventer line running through the starboard cleat and the
spinnaker pole downhaul line goes through a deck-mounted pulley. On the
right are details of the the pole uphaul and downhaul lines.

Boom
end with Preventer Line
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Bows,
Preventer line and
Spinnaker pole downhaul |

Pole
uphaul and downhaul |
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