Solent September Sailing

This Saturday was 6 months since Ed and I had our first date! A little crazy to see how time flies by... Luckily, Ed had chartered a yacht for the weekend so we were out sailing with four other friends around the Solent.

Sunset in the Hamble

I caught the train down to Southampton on Friday after school and we all made it to the boat for about 6:30pm. Ed had just come off a two day exam for his Coastal Yachtmaster qualification (he passed!) and a five day sailing course in preparation, so he was pretty shattered! But we got the yacht off the mooring in the Hamble river and out into the Solent in time to catch the end of the sunset. We then sailed over to Cowes on the Isle of Wight and moored at one of the marinas over there. I haven't really done any sailing in the dark so that was an awesome experience. Not sure I'd want to do it in tricky conditions though!

I had a bit of a nightmare with my stomach over the weekend sadly. We didn't eat dinner till around 9pm Friday night and I thought I was fine - I wasn't. I got really bad indigestion and was in quite a lot of pain so didn't sleep particularly well Friday night. Also not helped by being moored right by the channel and the yacht was bouncing quite a lot with the wash from other boats. The sunrise was pretty to make up for it all though! Stomach was still not great throughout Saturday which was a shame because the weather was really stunning. We came out of Cowes into the main Solent and found that wind against tide was producing some rather decent waves. The swell was about 1.5m which made for a rather exciting 40min or so as we crossed back over to the mainland. I was very glad to have my seasick patch on and I was mostly fine thank goodness. In order to wait for the wind to die down and the tide to turn, we meandered up the Beaulieu river to Buckler's Hard where we had a very leisurely couple of hours in the sun. Around 4pm we ventured back out into the Solent and the weather conditions were just fantastic. We got all our sail up and had a lovely run down to the Needles at the bottom of the Isle of Wight. They are certainly a stunning landscape feature and I felt very lucky to be able to appreciate them from the sea. We anchored in the bay just around from the Needles with only two other yachts for company and stayed there the night. Sadly it clouded over so no stars to see but certainly very peaceful.

The Needles

On Sunday the weather changed so we were up around 6:30 to weigh anchor and start making our way back to the Hamble. It was rather dramatic seeing the front approaching and it definitely felt like we were a little mouse racing to get away from the predatory cat. It caught us around 9am and things got rather wet but the rain flattened the sea and it wasn't cold so actually not unpleasant at all. Thank goodness for decent waterproofs! We did stop over in Newtown river on the Isle of Wight for lunch, to dry out a little, and to let the worst of the rain pass. In the afternoon the guys wanted to do some racing style sailing which isn't my favourite type of sailing... boat heeled all the way over, lots of tacking and gybing, having to work out courses etc.

This is us on the yacht but only with
our jib up.

But hey, it was all right for about an hour. At that stage the wind had picked up and it was getting late so we turned the yacht for home. We got back to the marina about 5:30pm, cleaned the boat, packed our gear, and said goodbye to the rest of the crew. Ed and I visited some friends of his and then we got home about 10pm feeling rather exhausted. Overall, an absolutely lovely weekend and nice to have a mini break from school!