Thursday 19 April

Eastbourne Marina, yesterday evening

The alarm went off at 3:45 this morning, (that was three forty five!!).  We calculated that this gave us enough time to get the boat prepared and be in the lock at 4:30,  and out past the nearly drying harbour entrance while there was still sufficient water for us. It was still dark, but before long the signs of dawn started to appear behind us in the east.  We could soon see well enough to be able to dodge the few fishing buoys that were in our path.

We were treated to a glorious sunrise, framed by long parallel vapour trails in the sky. It looked a little like something from an alien invasion movie. Shortly after this we watched the instruments as they showed we had moved from the eastern hemisphere into the west.

There was no wind and we settled down to a day of motoring, while George, the autohelm did most of the work.We saw the odd fishing boat and a warship that we thought was doing fisheries protection.  Someone put a wind farm in the way, so we had to detour around it, but it was not unexpected. After good initial speed the tide turned against us, but we were still making headway towards the Solent. In fact we were progressing so well that we contemplated whether we could make it all the way to Lymington before the tide there dropped too low. We concluded that it was too close a call, so we opted to change our destination to Cowes, from the initial plan of going to Haslar in Portsmouth.  It was strange after so long to find ourselves back in the familiar waters of the Solent.

We paused as we past Portsmouth to let another rather larger warship go ahead of us. We thought that she would enter the harbour but instead went to the anchorage at Spithead.  On the radio, we heard a concerned exchange with the harbour-master about a jet ski that was getting closer than the Navy was comfortable with.

We raced down the last few miles, carried by the rapid tide and entered Cowes, the first port that we have previous experience of, since Brixham last year. We haven't yet crossed our outward track, so we can't yet claim to have circumnavigated Britain, that will come tomorrow. So we were left with just sitting in the warm sun, dressed in tee shorts and shorts, remembering the deep snow of two and a half weeks ago. We have come a long way since then.

Distance covered today - 79 nautical miles

Total distance covered - 708 nautical miles

Steve (and Tricia)