We had a lovely evening in Bembridge at The Baywatch Inn. We bought a bottle of wine and sat next to the beach as the sun went down. We had expected it to be quiet being a Sunday night but the place was packed, so the food must be good!
We have been doing the usual weather checks and seem to find that a good dose of rain, sun, wind, calm, good visibility, poor visibility fore 2, 3, 4 possibly 5 is pretty much forecast for the next few days! This being the case we decided to head for Ryde, approx 5 miles from Bembridge. We chose our time in accordance with the tide (Ryde Marina dries out) and the windfinder website. After the usual game of dodgems with the local sailing schools we made our way back to open water. One thing that was a big surprise on this trip was the depth of water. We were a long way out with still only 6 or 7 feet below us. Not wanting to get too close to the shipping lane we followed the shallow until we reached the channel for the marina. Just as we turned into the channel we saw the hovercraft setting off. The hovercraft is based right next to Ryde marina and takes 10 minutes from Ryde to Southsea - that's an hour for us! We were fine where we were but there were two sailing boats just crossing to the channel from the West side. It looked pretty close from where we were but they all missed each other. We entered the marina and were shown exactly where to berth by the Harbour Master. We expected it to be quiet here for some reason but it was crazily busy! An enormous catamaran followed behind us. I've never seen anything like it before or apparently so difficult to manoeuvre! We found out the boat was only four weeks old so extreme caution was required around it! Once again we had neighbours alongside but of a similar variety to ourselves. A classic wooden motor cruiser which had just been re-launched after about ten years. It was all good fun and very exciting!
Being in Ryde on our boat was very strange. We know the place itself very well after attending one of the biggest scooter rallies in Europe there on a yearly basis. Just walking through the streets without them being full of scooters and scooterists and without the ever present smell of two stroke oil was unusual to us to say the least! We missed our friends at that point quite badly.
We had a good time in Ryde, the Harbour Master was an absolute star. That being said we were quite keen to move on and get round to Cowes so we could explore the River Medina. The weather forecast was similar to the day before so once we were floating we should be OK as long as we were back in port before 1pm (ish).
Our neighbours left around 11am, apologising for the smoke.... ha ha... if only they knew how smokey we were!! Just as we set off it began to rain, and blow. At least we were inside so the rain didn't matter much. We had an exciting 5 mile trip around to Cowes. We had to pass the hovercraft, the fast cat, the Wightlink ferries in and out of Fishbourne as well as the ferries in and out of Cowes. Firstly to dodge was the hovercraft, I was on lookout, it wasn't moving so no problem. I sat down and out of the corner of my right eye I saw it, the fast cat - it's fast! We had no option but to increase speed at this point and hope it was heading for where we thought it was heading. A few tense moments later we were out of the way and sweating a little. Eyes in the back of your head are needed around here!! Next job, Fishbourne and the Wightlink ferries. One ferry was in port, one waiting to go in. The one in port started moving, umm, not so sure what will happen here. Sure enough the ferry in port was heading back out for the mainland as the one waiting headed in. Trying to gauge its possible path I said to Martyn "What's your plan?" "I'm just going to keep my course across" he replied. I looked at him, looked at the ferry, looked at our speed, looked at the ferry. "Do you think we'll make it?" "Dunno". Gulp! Martyn looked at me and said "Do you want me to turn around and pass behind it?" "Sounds like a good idea" I replied. I was wrong! It turned out that the course the ferry was taking meant we would have been well out of the way before it got anywhere near. Now we had to deal with wash from both ferries. It was lumpy, bumpy and choppy. Water was thrown all over the place. Yet again I must make my apology to Martyn and promise not to interfere on matters of navigation! It was flipping big and fast though!
We turned the corner and were met with the amazing view of Cowes, and another really fast ferry! It was so fast though that it was in port, turned around it's passengers and was just starting on its return journey as we passed it in Cowes!
You can go out in the calmest of weather and the wash of one boat can cause you the biggest problem. We battled with the wash of a variety of different boats, speed boats, pilot boats, big cruisers even the yachts motoring cause a wash. It's all good fun though and you get a bit of a buzz with all the excitement. Cowes is a very expensive place to moor so we thought we would head up river to the Folly Inn. We are again without shore access, apart from the dinghy! We also have no electric or facility for water so we will just spend the day chilling and make our way into Newport tomorrow where hopefully we can re-charge our batteries and stock up the fridge. At last we don't have to worry about the comical weather for a day or two!
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