Heading home

An updated version of this blog is available at my updated blog site over at www.sailingsouth.org. You can find the blog article here.

Owning a boat is a strange thing. She is undoubtedly my pride and joy, but a lot of the time I, along with I'm sure most regular boat owners, couldn't honestly tell you why she is that object of such admiration.

Over the first couple of months of ownership I spent weekends and holidays staying on the boat while I painted the bottom of the boat with the lovely toxic anti fouling paint, serviced the old diesel engine in its dank oil stained hole, attempted to insulate parts of the aft cabin while also trying to sort out some of the drooping vinyl headlining (a job I still need to go back to 4 years later) and stripped down and serviced the toilets on the boat ... as a nurse I have worked on long stay chronic elderly wards, cleaning those toilets was THE WORST experience!!

Most of these jobs were done while the boat was out of the water, it is a bit of an unnerving experience living 10 foot up in the air next to a busy main road just the other side of a security fence which is actually below you. Just to make all of this more interesting, it was being done in the ice and at times snow of the early part of the year, so cold AND precarious!

If anyone ever tells you boating must be a glamorous life, send them to me, I'll find them a few jobs to set them straight.

Finally in the water

We launched at the beginning of March that first year, all full of excitement and dreams. It was a little on the cold side, but we were afloat and getting Isosceles ready for new adventures. We spent a few weekends around the Hamble river and the Solent, including a lovely, if chilly, weekend BBQing and sailing with a boat full of friends to celebrate a birthday.

April was soon with us and it was time to take Isosceles home. Poole Harbour had been her first registered port and was (according to all the legal paperwork) still her registered home.

It was a bright but chilly April day when we set off from the Hamble. We had a sailing friend that we had met on a charter holiday in Croatia along for the ride as he had plenty of experience of sailing in the Solent. Despite all the planning and good intentions things didn’t go to plan, but then when do they ever when it comes to boats.

After a long slog down the Solent against much more tide than expected the engine was already showing signs of running a little warm under the strain, but then there was a glorious sail across from the Solent to the entrance to Poole.

We arrived as the tide began to ebb through the entrance to Poole. Now if you’ve never sailed around there stop & take a quick look at the map. Poole is an absolutely enormous natural harbour, around 36 km2 (or 14 sq miles) of water, and for about 2 hours either side of low water all of that water is trying to get first out and then back in to the harbour through the tiny entrance to the place. The speed of the tide against us was epic! With hindsight it would have been much more sensible to drop the anchor, wait for the tide to turn and then go with the flow, quite literally, once the tide had turned. Unfortunately both of my crew were starting to want to eat, and I was a little too stubborn in my desire to reach my new mooring.

The engine began to overheat quite severely on the long trip through the harbour and all the way up to Lakeyard moorings, and as is often the case around dusk along the coast, the wind had died, so the engine had to be nursed along to get us to our destination.

We quickly loaded the outboard onto the back of the dinghy and set off to the shore in search of food. The three of us trooped into the local pub and found the nearest available table. We must have looked a right sight when we trooped in, all still in full waterproofs, boots and life-jackets.

Still, it was a good end to a long day.