Saturday 31 May 2014

Whistle Stop Cruise: update 3

31.5.14. Studland Bay, Poole





Stargazer heels to 14 knots of NE breeze and treads lightly into a dawn filled with promise,





We beat down harbour past the Gare Maritime....





....leave the breakwater in our bubbling wake.....




.... and lee bow our way out to the shipping lanes....




....where we lie off awhile, sails limp, while the breeze takes an afternoon siesta.




I celebrate its return, now from the W, with birthday flapjacks and coffee.




We reach over lightly ruffled blue seas....




....until Harry, pale and slender in the soft evening light, welcomes us home.

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Location:Ferry Road,,United Kingdom

Friday 30 May 2014

Whistle Stop Cruise: update 2

30.5.14. Quai de la Hune, Cherbourg





I awake to the creak of mooring lines as Stargazer stirs to the incoming tide.




Tall windowed, pastel painted buildings gaze over a lushly planted boulevard.




Shops overspill onto pavements...




.....filled with knots of exuberant conversation.




Tunefully tumbling fountains play brightly in the square.




On the front, the stone built church surveys the shifting sea.




Tomorrow is my birthday. To celebrate, Stargazer and I will be on passage.

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Location:Quai de la Hune,Cherbourg-Octeville,France

Thursday 29 May 2014

Whistle Stop Cruise: live update 1

29.5.14 Quai de la Hune, Cherbourg.








There's a fair breeze for France as we leave Studland in the misty dawn.




The sun breaks through mid channel...





... and a piratical tan sailed silhouette, on the horizon turns, out to be the pilot cutter Jolie Brise - maybe heading for the Old Gaffers gathering in Yarmouth.




The breeze veers from NE to W and I break out Stargazer's cruising chute...




....as we cross the eastbound shipping lane and....




....slither across the sluicing channel tide and in under Cherbourg's stalwart Napoleonic battlements.

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Location:Quai de la Hune,Cherbourg-Octeville,France

Wednesday 28 May 2014

Poole Pottering

28.5.14 Poole




The rising sun sets our anchorage aflame....




...and kindles the wood of the beach huts to a deep russet.




Yesterday evening we slipped in under Anvil Point....




.... its lighthouse silhouetted behind a sun spangled sea....




....to rest under the brindled chalk cliffs of Studland Bay.




The sea breeze arrives to carry us east to Hengistbury Head....




....under blue skies.




We ride the tide back to Poole Harbour, and into South Deep.




Windsurfers streak across the channel....




and canoeists explore the islands.




We anchor in the pool off Goathorn




....and watch the sun go down. Tomorrow will be an early start. We're bound, cross Channel to Cherbourg.

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Location:United Kingdom

Tuesday 6 May 2014

MAY DAY in OSBORNE BAY


Stargazer is hard on the wind. Bound east across Poole Bay, with the race fleet. A May Day holiday invitingly before us.


The sluicing Solent tide gulps us down the Needles Channel. Past its jutting chalk molars and squat candy striped lighthouse.


Royalist thunders unseen out of a hazy Totland Bay - as if springing from the mists of time. Colours hoisted at her peak; all plain sail set; a swashbuckling white bone in her teeth; her gun ports awash.


Stargazer too leans to the breeze and puts her shoulder down. The tide tugs at her helm as it rockets us through Hurst Narrows and .....


.....on into the smooth waters of The Solent. Past Yarmouth and Lymington and down to Cowes, on The Island shore.


A world girdling, master of the seas tanker quails at the tight swing into Southampton Water. A nanny tug sees her predicament, deftly manhandles her round and sends her on her way, with a reassuring pat on the rump.


Diamonds of sunlight dance ahead of us on the water. We ghost past the Royal Yacht Squadron start line, on a falling breeze and the last of the fair tide.


We tip toe round Old Castle Point, into Osborne Bay and anchor amid the green jig saw of its tree lined shore.....


......beneath the weathered stone keep....


......and beside the bleached skeleton of a storm slain woodland giant.


Astern, Portsmouth's Spinnaker Tower bellies tautly on the skyline - bound east, towards the dawn


Above Calshot Spit, an ochre evening sun blossoms a sea borne spinnaker into a bright flower, beneath Fawley's forest of bare headed baobab trunks.