If you follow me on any form of social media you will have seen an abundance of photo’s of my sailing adventure this weekend.

My little brother is a professional yacht skipper (the dream, am I right?!) and now he finally owns his own yacht, Temerity – a Hunter Legend 335 laid down in 1989 like all the best things *ahem*

She was moored up at the pontoons on the Medina River (Isle of Wight), just up from Cowes and ideally situated near The Folly Inn…

 

 

My brother and his girlfriend are actually thinking about maybe starting a blog about their ‘live aboard life’ so I won’t say too much on here, as I’ll probably link to them in the future!

We took the Isle of Wight ferry across to East Cowes on Friday afternoon, then got a taxi out to the Folly Inn and picked up the water taxi to D Pontoon to embark Temerity.

Luckily, my brother being the yacht handyman that he is managed to fix the plumbing and engine issues that evening, and so we finished up with dinner at the pub. If you’re looking for a good place to eat (complete with live music and table dancing on Saturdays) then look no further than the Folly!

​So, on to our sail (using shipping forecast areas, naturally)

We set off at 0630 from the pontoon, through to Cowes, where we were chased out in to the Solent by the  Red Funnel ferry. Unfortunately, as we left Cowes we realised that the weather was not in our favour and almost the entirety of our route was going to be in to the wind. My brother was suitably peeved at this lack of wind and requirement to motor. We had the main up, which maybe gave us an extra 1-2kts, but there we go.

​As Horatio Nelson once said, “I cannot command winds and weather” – Such is the life of a sailor!

From Cowes we headed out through the Solent between the IoW and the South Hants coast until we reached our hop off point at The Needles. The wind was still unfortunately not in our favour, and short of tacking the entire way to Plymouth we were again forced to motor.

We crossed over in to Portland from Wight (which ends at around the Swanage/Studland area) and continued on to Portland Bill, where we then had both the wind and tide against us for 6 hours. We seemed to be parallel to Portland Bill for what seemed like hours, but in reality it was just an illusion and we were moving, however slowly!

From Portland we headed across Lyme Bay, where we were fortunate enough to have some company…

A sight that never grows old. Apologies for the somewhat shaky filming, I was also trying to helm and maintain a course at the same time!

We were treated to the most beautiful sunset over Lyme Bay, the calm before the storm as it were.

Ok, so it wasn’t really stormy at all but the wind did pick up at around midnight and we were being chucked about a lot more than we had been all day. The problem with sailing at night is that you can’t see the waves and it’s harder to cross them in a way that doesn’t see you being thrown off your seat!

After persevering towards Start Point (of lighthouse fame) and not really getting very far we eventually made it past and decided to head in to Salcombe for some calmer waters and a couple of hours sleep. We were operating a 1.5hr on, 1.5hr off 1.5hr watchkeeping rota, but at this point we were all exhausted.

​So, at 0530 Sunday, we took down the main, lassoed a mooring boy, and passed out within minutes!

After Start Point we headed in to the Plymouth shipping area and were treated with glorious sunshine. We sailed down past Bigbury and then eventually we could see Rame Head on the horizon, so I knew we were getting closer.

From here onwards we had a smooth sail in to Plymouth, still somewhat in to the wind, but we managed to maintain around 6kts and headed in past the Breakwater and round to the marina (my brother’s new home) I’d only sailed in to Plymouth once, but it’s always a good sight to see Smeatons Tower up on Plymouth Hoe.

It’s made me super excited for Southampton Sailing Week in May 2017 as well, I definitely need to get out on the water more than I am presently!