Weymouth to Yarmouth

On Monday afternoon, we had a mad moment and decided to do some more boat polishing. Of course, the last time we did that some idiot in a yacht ran into the bit that had just been completed and gouged lumps out of the hull so we were not too motivated. Still, the flybridge should be harder to hit and damage, unless there are Kamikaze seagulls around. Just as we were completing this we were hailed by a man who is a potential Nordhavn 43 buyer – Andrew. He wanted to have the chance to chat to some existing owners and as we were the only ones around, he had to make do with us. The world is so unfair to him.

He and his wife Linda joined us for a discussion of boating, life in the slow lane out to sea, life in general and cruising plans. Very civilised start to the evening! We need to apologise to Linda's mother as they left a little later than planned to drive her home....

Tuesday am was a “get up and go” start to the day as we wanted to take the tide towards the Solent area when passing the headland at St Albans Head near Poole and then up the Needles Channel alongside the Isle of Wight.  A lovely calm start to the day, passing two square rigged ships in Weymouth harbour that contrasted strangely with the Condor fast cat ferry. They won in the beauty stakes. Here is Royalist (a stolen picture showing her sailing), so you can judge:

It was very strange to head back into the Solent, our stomping ground for many years whilst week-ending from Hythe Marina. Passing the iconic Needles – sadly in the gloom though:

The Solent, although quiet by Solent standards, still seemed very busy to us. We called Yarmouth on the radio expecting that it would be pretty full (Easter week holiday people) but it was almost empty. No stress in getting a spot for a couple of nights. The harbour master seemed most impressed at how the boat spun around and then backed into a corner to drop onto our allocated mooring the “right side” to.

A trip to Harold Hayles, the Spurs cutter people to get some spare bearings in case we needed them next weekend was the usual hoot. Looking at their internet presence Harold Hayles website you would think it is a serious operation. In fact it is a real “cottage industry” with the office overflowing with paper, a “where on earth is my cash receipt book, the boss must have moved it” few moments when paying but a lovely friendly approach.

For the non-boaters, the rope cutter is a device that looks like this:

which is fitted to the main propeller shaft. The idea is that if a rope got wound around the prop / shaft, it would get sliced up by the cutter rather than potentially disable the engine. The Nordhavn design does all it can to prevent this by having a long full keel that helps push any stray rope etc downwards. It also has a “shoe” running from the keel to the rudder which again protects the propeller:

 So the rope cutter is really the last line of defence:

If all that fails, there is always the little wing engine. The cutters do work – we had them fitted to our previous Broom 415 and they chopped up a discarded fishing net which we caught (no pun intended, it was not at all amusing!) and saved us a potentially messy situation.