Dartmouth to Gosport (Haslar time again)

All good things coming to an end. Oh yes. Despite the lovely location and most social time, we needed to move. Why? Well, we wanted to be back in the Solent area to take Mr Toddler for his hospital appointment, having already delivered Mrs Toddler for hers a few days ago. The problem is the total lack of free berths there. We needed to be in the place for an "unspecified period" of time as we didn't know if there would be a follow-up appointment. Impossible to get. So, we asked the Penarth manager if he could find us a spot in Portland - another Boatfolk marina. Stuart tried for us, failed but without prompting kindly called his colleague Ben in Haslar who said they would find a slot for us somehow to help out. Brilliant news. OK it is Gosport again but beggars and choosers and all that.....

The ebb tide roars through Dart Marina so it meant a departure at the optimum time for the tides was going to be "interesting". Possibly messy too with a large Fairline Targa thing alongside us. Having stayed in Dartmouth for ages, the marina folks were very kind and allowed us to wait on the berth until slack water, late afternoon.

As we headed off, John and Kath acted as official photographers for us which was very kind indeed. Backing off the berth:

and underway, just after the crew had retrieved the fenders so looking a bit tidier:

As we passed through the town, Simon, Amanda and Jack came out to make sure that we were leaving in their Dory:

We will not mention the lack of lifejackets - we know that the Dory used to be marketed as unsinkable but...  They were also sporting a rescue flag:

which you can just read if a bit backwards. Frankly we didn't think we needed that in the river - everything seemed to be working OK despite the long time gap since the last sea voyage.

They were official video boat:

you can see that we had polished the port side of the hull whilst in the Dart:

Rather a lot of boat pictures we know. Sorry about that but it is so rare to get any of us underway. 

Out to sea it was a glorious day, sitting on the flybridge, calm seas (around 0.2 metre waves only) and very light winds:

Yes, the true wind speed did drop to under 1 knot.  We had a most gentle run, retiring to the pilothouse for dinner with rather nice blue views:

and a bit of Kylie's bum to enjoy too. She still has her wing around Patrick, they seem to be inseparable. 

There was a stunning sunset to enjoy as well:

then it was the usual radar and FLIR to watch for the night passage up to Portland Bill and around St Albans head. The crew was on duty when we found a pot marker infested area and was kept busy dodging the images of them on the FLIR. One nearly got us - she was being good and updating the log when one sneaked closer than she wanted it. Looking up at the FLIR image it was a rapid course change and into neutral for the engine. That woke up the captain who found that we were now on a reciprocal course. Quite a dramatic about turn indeed.  Some wind picked up which in turn picked up some waves and made pot spotting trickier so it kept us very focussed for a while.

Dawn came as we were approaching the western entrance to the Solent and was equally impressive:

Another show to enjoy:

The trip timing meant that we had to push the strengthening tide through the Solent and to Portsmouth. Could not be helped, we had rocket assistance going past Portland when it was most important. 

Arriving at Portsmouth at low tide was fun. The ferries were not able to go through the Swashway as the depth was too low, so they had to travel all the way around into the main channel. The fast cats were using it but very slowly to start with and naturally the hovercraft was perfectly happy. This meant commercial traffic was approaching from all sorts of strange directions and all at the same time. We opted to go the long was round too, only to find the Commodore Clipper cargo ship departing that way for the Channel Islands. It was busy. 

Here is the route for info:

The little kink in the run across Lyme Bay was the crew avoiding a fishing boat. Or so she said. 

Arriving into Haslar some 15 hours later we backed onto a very nice berth and felt pleased that we had a secure spot where we could leave the boat for a couple of days if needed. 

Maintenance news:

The long spell moored in Dartmouth has taken its toll on the keel cooler. The engine ran around 5 degrees Centigrade warmer than usual and during our little wide open throttle run towards the end of the trip, the temperature climbed even more. Poor boat needs a lift out soon. Ironically, when we set off the engine temperature climbed to around 55 degrees C and stopped. A check with the IR gun confirmed that this was wrong and some gentle manipulation of the connection on the temperature sender soon got it back to a more normal 75C or so. Looks like some corrosion had built up on the terminals during the layup period in Dartmouth so a proper clean up will be done once the engine cools down. Important as the coolant temperature error meant that the engine was being slightly over-fuelled by the ECU - the instruments showed around 10% extra "litres per hour" compared to our normal fuel burn so the sender issue had to be corrected whilst underway.