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.
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