An English Summer 84

The Poole Yacht Club boats erupt from the Needles Channel. Home bound, from the Solent, after a Bank Holiday of racing and merriment.

Past Stargazer, they charge. With enthusiastic waves we share our joy, to be dancing across the swell, our boats wonderfully alive beneath us. Spray streaming back from their bows. Sails taut as drum skins. Drawing powerfully.

We revel in the roar of the wind, the rush of the water, the perfection of this moment.

Tenacious greeted Stargazer, from out in Poole Bay, as we left Blood Alley, at dawn, on the last of the ebb; tip toed tentatively out through the shoals of the Looe Channel; and set course for Hengistbury Head. Beating, with her long loping stride, under double reefed main and full jib, in twenty to twenty five knots apparent.

Tacking down into the North Channel. Drawn into the Solent, by the turning tide. Making seven knots, over the ground. Carrying long, port tack, boards along The Island shore. Past Gurnard, to Cowes.

The Southsea hovercraft, that English eccentric of passenger transportation, thunders across Stargazer's bow. Come and gone in the space of a few, skipping, heartbeats. Off on her delightfully idiosyncratic way.

Astern the roll on roll off ferry churns steadily by. Inbound for Portsmouth.

Stargazer's sheets are eased now. We are on a fine reach, the fair tide still under us, the breeze down to eighteen knots, in the shelter of the Solent. The waters calm. I engage auto pilot, as we bring the Spinnaker Tower abeam, and the traffic thins. Brew a pot of lunchtime coffee and indulge in a cheese and tomato sandwich.

Through the forts, Horse Sand to port, No Man's Land to starboard, Stargazer sweeps. Out of the Solent. Back into the full breeze. Hard on the wind, once more. Spearing down, toward the West Pole beacon. Skimming the edge of the shoals.

Closing fast on the Chichester Bar. Riding the flood, up the Emsworth Channel. The roaring wind slowly drops to a whisper. Chevron plumed oystercatchers skim low, across our bow.

The memory of that romp, across Poole Bay, in the early morning light, alive still, in my mind's eye.