Cruise in Company October 2014

On Friday 24th October three yacht crews met in the Castle Inn in Gosport where we finalised the plans for the weekend sail, had a good meal and a few drinks (of course). The tides and wind would not be particularly in our favour going eastwards and so we opted to rendezvous at Yarmouth, Isle of Wight as a good compromise.

After a chilly but pleasant day’s sail we moored in Yarmouth Harbour. Two of the crews ate on board but we, on Brisbane Star, ate at ‘The Blue Crab’ which sounds like a night club out of a Raymond Chandler novel but is actually a rather fine sea food restaurant.

Sunday saw us set sail back towards Gosport on a mostly downwind course. Brisbane Star went up Southampton Water to explore the ocean shipping terminals. It was a surprisingly pleasant detour and much more interesting than any of us had expected, made a little more so when motoring in light winds, a rubber elbow on the engine heat exchanger split and filled the saloon and cabins with a dense cloud of steam.

Sunday late afternoon saw us all back at Gosport to clear and clean the boats. I stayed on till Monday so that I did not have to battle the Sunday traffic returning to London. The Brisbane Star tracks on the charts below show what we did.