Have we inadvertantly moved to Weymouth?

I mean, as you can see from the picture above, Weymouth is by no means a bad place to be. It's just that we weren't exactly intending to stay here for the best part of two weeks. We're fast being reacquainted with an eternal truth of sailing - that the weather is a total fuckwit.

But I'm getting rather ahead of things; I've got some of catching up to do. When last I wrote, we were dripping in a marina in Portsmouth. Things cleared up beautifully the next day and, expecting perhaps a little more wind than was ideal, but nothing too troublesome, we headed off again, this time with an anchorage on the Isle of Wight by the name of Newtown Creek as our destination. The wind was, indeed, definitely brisk as we left Portsmouth harbour and tried out our mainsail for the first time. Meanwhile, the sail was not cooperating. It's a style of sail we haven't used before, and it took a good fifteen minutes of wrestling to get it up; even then, it was caught at the bottom and not at all the shape it was supposed to be.

Well, we didn't have far to go, and we really didn't have the patience to pul it down and try all over again. We stuck out the headsail instead, turned the engines off, and basked in the quiet of sailing - and at a good speed too! Even when the wind died off (the exact opposite of what it was predicted to do, naturally), we were still moving at a pretty remarkable pace. If this was what sailing a large catamaran was like, we were enthusiastically on board.





By the time we reached the entrance to the anchorage, Newtown Creek, the wind had disappeared altogether, the water was absolutely calm and the sun warm on our fifteen layers of clothing. We selected a spot with care in the narrow river and once again allowed the cats out to explore, which they did with excessive confidence, as the picture to the right shows.

Newtown Creek was a wonderful place to spend a few days. It's sheltered from all directions, incredibly beautiful (it's a National Trust nature reserve) and extremely quiet. We even got to watch seals from the back deck as they basked in the sun.

We couldn't stay for long, however, as our calorifier had started leaking. Unless we fancied living without hot water - which, in the UK in April, we definitely didn't - we needed to get somewhere a new one could be delivered. With mild regret, we headed out of Newtown Creek again a couple of days later towards Poole Harbour, which was about 30 miles down the coast.

We had, for the most part, a good sail, although the wind was annoyingly prone to wibbling about from almost dead downwind, causing our sails to require changing every ten minutes. A more significant problem came later, as we were about to enter the harbour. To the right of the entrance is a shallower patch of water - but still comfortably deep enough for us to cross, according to the chart. It seemed like a perfectly good shortcut. And yet, as we tried to cross it, the depth dropped alarmingly until there were only a couple of feet below us, our depth gauge showing we had over four metres less than the chart claimed, and the waves were getting quite lively in the shallow water. We veered south to go through the official channel, just about staying clear of the dangerous patch of water, and wondering what on earth was going on.

We realised later what had happened. Our charting software allows you to set a 'safe' depth, and water shallower than this is highlighted. Peter had told me he'd changed this from ten metres to five, figuring that a boat with a one metre draught could cope with a slightly less cautious safe depth. As it turned out, that wasn't exactly what he'd done. In fact, he had set the chart to add five metres to the depth everywhere. Oops, said he.

We stayed in Poole harbour for a few days being assaulted by high winds, including one night in a marina to pick up the new calorifier, when it seemed fairly miraculous that I managed to berth the boat successfully with the vigor of the wind. We spent the next, suddenly still, night in an extremely pretty anchorage right by (surprisingly) one of the largest oil rigs in the country (considerately disguised by trees), and woke to ethereal mist.

It was very lovely, but rather a concern, given that we were planning to sail to Weymouth that day. But the forecast promised it would lift, and as we motored slowly out of Poole harbour it seemed to be getting much brighter.

Our positivity was short-lived. We hadn't gone more than a few miles before we hit dense fog. Before long we could only see a hundred feet or so in any direction. To make matters worse, there was no wind at all, so we had no choice but to motor, and the cats had responded to the engine noise by expelling every bodily substance they could think of all in one go.

It's exhausting travelling in dense fog. We have AIS, which gives out a signal from Penguin and allows us to search for other vessels nearby, but not every boat uses AIS so we couldn't afford to relax our attention. We strained our eyes staring into the mist, hoping against hope that it would clear.

It didn't. We were crossing a point known as St Alban's Head, renowned for its turbulent waters in the best of conditions, and even in the complete absence of wind it was getting bumpy. Then, terrifyingly close, a fishing boat emerged from the fog, zooming towards us; we both swerved, but it was too close for comfort. Behind it, more fishing boats were appearing. A couple were stationery, but most of them were moving at high speed in conflicting directions, making it incredibly difficult to avoid them all. They seemed to regard it as a personal affront that we had arrived in their midst, and made no effort at all to reduce their speed as they shot by, adding to the confused waves with their wake. We had to dodge about ten of them before the stream of fishing boats abated, and we had only the bouncy waters to contend with. And, of course, the fog.

We decided swiftly that we had no desire to be out here for any longer than we had to, and pushed the engines harder. Only four hours after we had set off, we were rounding the Weymouth breakwater - quite ghostly in the mist - and motoring carefully (visibility was still pretty shit) up the harbour.

With relief, we took our berth on the town quay. It wasn't really necessary, as it turned out, but the harbour staff came out to help, one of them remarking that Penguin looked 'magnificant', which did a lot to cheer us both up.

Overlooking Portland Harbour (which just happens to be right next to Weymouth)

We were pretty sure we didn't want to have to do that again any time soon, but fortunately we knew we were staying put for a few days anyway. And then a few days more. In the end, it became more like two weeks, thanks to a combination of my work hours and Storm Hannah, but finally we've set off again. We're now in Torquay - but our journey here is a tale for a future post; this one's gone on long enough already. If we could just get some sun, everything would be grand.