Day sail to Yarmouth

With the glorious sunshine and settled weather, I decided to take a day off and go sailing down in the western Solent.

The wind forecasts were mixed, but all agreed that the day would start with light winds and sure enough as I left Keyhaven and headed southeast towards Yarmouth, it was calm with a gentle summer breeze.

At around 11 the wind had almost dropped away, there was just enough to goose wing and head east towards Lymington with the tide which would hopefully bring Yarmouth due south by the time the sea breeze filled in.

With quite a big tide also pushing eastward until around 11.30 so I wanted to be well up on Yarmouth and away from the Hurst narrows and the strong west going tide, so lack of wind wasn't a problem and made for a very relaxing helm.

The wind filled in for a perfect reach across the Solent and a great view of Fort Albert and the Needles.

Arriving on the beach outside Yarmouth it was a bit lumpy with all the passing motorboat wash, so no time for a leisulely lunch, I headed back out towards Keyhaven.

The wind had got up from the west and between the wind, the tide and the motorboats, kicked up some pretty steep and uncomfortable seas leaving Yarmouth and until I was well north and in the lee of Hurst spit on the north shore of the Solent. The Wanderer behaved impecabbly taking everything in her stride, riding up over the steep chop and waves and keeping a good speed. Alas I was too busy at the helm to take any photo's.

It was good to be out on the water, the wind got up to around 16-18 knots on the retrun which is about as much as I would want to cope with, I did stop hove to, to fully roll away the jib and take stock, the first time I have tried hove to which the Wanderer settled into very well.

It's probably around 5 kilometers from Keyhaven to Yarmouth as the crow flies, I should have taken a GPS track but I'm guessing I sailed around 12 plus Kilometers,  about 7.5 miles.