Gosport was OK, but a little choppy. The constant ferry traffic creates huge amounts of swell on a regular basis. The noise from the pontoons was probably worse than the motion and provided an early morning wake up call. We got up and began to get ready for our trip a couple of miles up river to Port Solent. We had read in our Channel guide that there was a supermarket and lots of shops at Port Solent so we didn't need to stock up at Gosport. The weather was gloomy to say the least and the tide quite strong as we left the marina. It became very clear that today would not be a good day to head out to sea - at least not for us - the sailing boats were still out in force however. The rain and mist crept in as we followed the buoyed channel. Some of you may remember our adventure through a certain firing range near Rye, well, this is one big firing range. The signs tell you that if they are firing you must just pass through quickly, how reassuring. For those of you hoping for another exciting story regarding this firing range I have to disappoint you. We passed through without incident! We did however spot a sailing yacht that had veered out of the channel, possibly trying to take a short cut. By the lack of movement it would appear the shortcut may have been unsuccessful. We did hang around a while to see if they needed help but they didn't seem to be too concerned about the situation. We passed the huge grey warships and Portchester castle, finally locking in at Port Solent. We got a lovely reception here from the staff. Ominously the chap operating the lock said "If you have any trouble with the berth just give us a call". Umm.... "Should we have trouble with the berth" I asked. "Oh no - just being polite" he said smiling. So off we went in search of berth G09. Concerned by his comments I started looking at the berths as we passed. Note no.1 - lots of very expensive white motorboats, note no.2 - very small berths. Our black hull and 18 tonnes of steel makes us unpopular at the best of times, no more so than in the marinas. We found our berth, next to a Fairline Targa, 40 foot of very expensive plastic. The wind was not in our favour so we proceeded with caution. Luckily a very helpful lady took a rope and helped us in. We would have been OK though with Martyns expert maneuvering!
Berthed up and plugged into the electric we paid our dues and set about looking for the supermarket. The first sign for concern was that no supermarket showed on the plan of the marina. We found a bookshop, a rock climbing shop, a shop selling pots and pans and a cinema. We also found a Wetherspoons, a Chiquitos, a pub offering 'silver specials' for a fiver among other eating establishments. There's a picture building up here. What we didn't find was a supermarket..... Back to the boat, Internet on. According to the Internet there was a supermarket on site, there may have been once, not anymore. We didn't see this as being a major problem as the Internet said there was a Tesco less than a mile away. We decided we would get the shopping done before getting cleaned up and relaxing. Good job we did. The Tesco less than a mile away didn't exist but the one two miles away did! A four mile round trip to the supermarket in the rain made for too very sorry, soggy sights on our return to the boat. We resisted temptation to hit the pub that night and watched Big Brother instead. We thought we might treat ourselves the following day.
We both noted that although the staff at the marina were very friendly and helpful the boat owners in general seemed quite the opposite. People would make a point of shutting doors and gates behind them even if you were just approaching them. I understand that this is probably a security thing but they did it to the extent of being rude. We also noted that not one person berthed in the marina ever spoke to either of us apart from the lady who took our rope when we arrived. This is bizarre behaviour to say the least. You have to wonder if these people ever even speak to each other!
We attempted to have a more social evening on Saturday but returned back to bar Elephant Daze after a dirty glass in one pub and warm white wine in another. All that money around but no class!
So what do we do now? Sunday looked like a good day for sailing, a heavenly force 2 - 3 forecast with sunshine to boot. The Portsmouth area was the last one on the list of places to see before we made the decision that would either take us home or keep us down here. For those of you that know us we are very terrible decision makers, we still have not decided! We made one decision though, following a shock at the cashpoint. That decision was to head back to Brighton, at least from there we would either be on the right route for Hull or not too far away from The Solent.
It was a glorious day as forecast, I donned my shorts and slapped on the suncream. Would today be the day I finally got to sit outside? We did a forecast check, the weather warning that had unexpectedly appeared last night had gone again now and all looked good. Flat calm was the order of the day. First we had to negotiate Portsmouth. Oh what joy! It was like wacky races, I quite enjoyed the madness of it all, probably slightly more than Martyn did. Small boats have to use the channel at the side of the shipping lane. This is OK but there are large number of small boats all looking for their own piece of water. We timed it quite well ferry wise though and made it out to open water without too much stuff ending up on the floor. Before we knew it we were saying goodbye to the Isle of Wight, I admit I shed a tear. It felt very sad to be saying goodbye. We felt quite at home on the Isle of Wight much more so than the mainland (Elephant Boatyard being the exception!). I think we struggle with the marina mentality and feel happier in the mud! Mud seems to be good!
I would love to tell you that we had a lovely trip to Brighton.... I did get to sit out, something I've not been brave enough to do before, and it was great! Something happened to the water though as we passed Selsey Bill, it began to roll, not badly at first, but unnervingly. I saw Martyn tightening up the catches on the window and picked up on a sense of foreboding. I started to move things from the worktops and ram them in cupboards. Pretty soon we didn't have time to be sad, we had other things to worry about. As the Isle of Wight slipped further away we seemed to loose some of the shelter from the mainland and a cold wind crept in from the South West. No sitting out now, the door was shut, it was freezing! We were around the area of Littlehampton when it got uncomfortable. The waves were hitting beam / stern on so we were rolling again. Progress was already slow as we hadn't been able to pick up a good tide. We knew we were in for a few hours of this, unless we ditched in. Poor Martyn, I am going to retire from weather forecasting, I'm clearly rubbish at it! We passed Littlehampton and kept going, next possible stop Shoreham. We passed Shoreham, it was getting slowly worse but Martyn wanted to continue. The waves were lifting us sideways and breaking underneath, you would see what looked like a growing mound of water on one side, feel it lift you and then break into white water on the other side. It was actually quite mesmerising to watch, if not a little scary! I knew by Shoreham that we had 5 miles to go, 5 long miles though. We reached the pier and saw the marina breakwater up ahead. We knew by this point that we had to get into shelter. It wasn't the easiest entrance to a marina, but we made it. We looked at each other and laughed, you know that "were you as scared as I was laugh?" that you do when you've just been through something unexpectedly terrifying.
Days like this really make you think. We travelled about 48 miles today and thought the weather window was sufficient to do so. We had bolt holes we could use so it wasn't too bad. If we head for Hull the luxury of boltholes on long trips become few and far between. Not sure my nerves can cope with that just yet......!
