From Dartmouth to Weymouth - second attempt a week later

Crosswinds moored at the quay in Weymouth

All in all the contrast with last week's aborted journey couldn't be starker. I collected David at just after 11pm. We reached Noss on Dart Marina at 0100 and squeezed ourselves and various bits of "stuff" into the dinghy for a single trip. Crosswinds was cold. Rather than do jobs straightaway, David and I tried to sleep. Up again at 0400, coffee, hot cross buns and jobs in preparation. Many of the jobs were associated with battening down things that aren't supposed to be mobile but managed it the previous week. At one time, last week, David was juggling my laptop in his left hand, the wheel in his right and trying to retain his balance on one foot whilst I was holding the sliding door from the wheelhouse that shouldn't have come off its runners. This time I put the laptop on one of those non-slip lattice mats and it proved to work very well. I velcroed various other objects.

At 0525 we started to try and cast off. Unfortunately the tide was so strong and it had dragged us over the line between the two mooring buoys. We tried everything that we could including climbing down to the water's edge and trying to grapple it with a boat hook. In the end I had to take the risk and edge slowly forward with the wheel hard over and slowly we edged clear.

The next 40nms or so were pretty uneventful. We couldn't sail on this leg because the wind was dead astern - almost a true westerly - and its speed over the deck didn't even disturb the ensign let alone fill a sail. There was a slight swell coming from our Starboard quarter passing under us and coming out at the port bow. This created a small corkscrew effect but not enough to turn us green.
We were a bit too close to the Bill (2.79nms) 6 hrs later but bang on time. The race bubbled up a bit around us but we edged further out to sea as we passed and at 5nms we turned North East towards the East Shambles buoy.
As we edged round the East Shambles it became clear just how much our own speed through the water in the same direction as the wind had reduced the apparent wind speed. Now our Nor' Nor' Westerly course turned our forward motion into an advantage increasing the speed of the wind over the surface of the sail and making the sails profile much better than they would on wind alone.

This reach showed the strong stabilising effect of wind on sails.

Throughout the journey the autopilot has functioned well in the long term ie it followed the course to steer but it did so to an accompaniment of far too much yaw.

(David looking steely at the helm as we crept out of the mouth of the Dart, wary of a repeat of last week's swell.)

Just east of Weymouth harbour pier we luffed up and dropped the sails.

Coming alongside in the outer harbour basin went perfectly, David jumped ashore and after I had called home asking for a lift we spent a final hour tidying our lines and sorting out below decks.

I am hoping to do the final leg to Ridge, Wareham this coming Wednesday.