Changing plans - Plymouth to Lymington

We mentioned in the last post that the weather forecasts for the week ahead were grim. Here is an example, copied later on, for the Wednesday / Thursday timeframe:

Not even a tiny bit tempting....  the reality during that week ended up as 90 mph gusts at the Needles on the Isle of Wight.

There were two possible weather windows to use, bearing in mind that we needed to optimise our departure time as we would be passing through some areas where the tide flows very strongly and we wanted to maximise the help we would get to shorten what would be a bumpy trip anyway. One window had lighter winds but they would be on the nose for much of our journey meaning more pitching which gets tiring. The other, a day later, had stronger winds that would build during our trip and be pretty strong at the end of it, but from a better direction - on the stern quarter where the stabilisers could counteract much of it. We opted for the second and planned a trip that would get us into the shelter of the Solent area and onto a berth in Lymington before it got really nasty out to sea.

Leaving Plymouth at 6pm in the gloom we at least could sneak through the narrow channel next to Drake's Island rather than go the long way around. Even the markers looked depressed somehow:

The night began slightly murky, a bit foggy and pretty unappealing really. Annoyingly, the damp air degrades the FLIR image quality significantly and where we normally get clear images of waves etc it struggled. That was particularly tricky around the Salcombe area  and Prawle Point, as we know there are always plenty of pot markers there, so we headed a bit further south than normal to try and avoid the worst of them. Luckily the FLIR was still working well enough to pick one up that we duly segwayed around after uttering a few choice words. The sea state was OK, the wind was with the tide so not too many big waves were being dragged up. The strength and direction were as per the forecast. So far so good. As we passed Start Point, ready for the long haul across Lyme Bay, we had to divert for a couple of commercial ships which was unexpected! Rarely do they come from that angle in that place. You can see them and the kink in our track on the plotter image:

and for the radar addicts amongst us:

For the non boating folks, the plotter picture is "north up" ie looking like a normal chart / map would whereas the radar is in "heading up" mode meaning that the image is what we would have seen out of the helm seat looking forward if it wasn't pitch dark! The captain's brain likes to keep the two displays this way. The crew is less keen.

As we headed towards Portland Bill, where it can get rather rough (!) the tide turned against us and of course that bumps  up the wave height and makes the wavelength shorter and less pleasant.  We stayed well away from the Bill itself on our track so it was all OK, just slow going, down to around 3 knots over the ground as we punched the tide. Daylight (well, a grey imitation of it) arrived together with a poor little tern who really wanted to land on the boat and have a rest but the boat motion made it rather tricky to hit and then grip onto the rail::

After what the crew reckons was around 20 attempts including what aircraft folks would call several touch and go landings, the poor tired thing gave up. We felt a little guilty somehow.

Pretty much as per forecast the wind picked up during the morning but that was fine - we knew that the tide would turn to help us so the impact on the wavetrain would be less. It was pretty quiet for traffic until the Barfleur, a ferry, departed from Poole:

 

She kept turning towards us, making our closest point of approach well below anything that we would be comfortable with and then, just before we diverted north to give more clearance, decided to straighten up a bit and give us our original clearance. Maybe the officer of the watch decided to be kind to us as it was choppy out to sea and heading north for a while would have made the rest of our trip harder as we had to claw our way back to the south and into the waves more. Maybe they saw us on AIS / radar and followed the collision regulations. Maybe the original turn was just a mistake. No matter why it was good news! Here is Barfleur passing across our bow, around 0.7 nautical miles off and slightly blurry thanks to the movement of the boat and some rain on the screen too: 

The route looks pretty simple really:

and the bumpiest bit was reserved for the end (as expected) some 2.5 metre waves on the stern quarter together with waves reflected off the Isle Of Wight made a messy confused wave pattern that the stabilisers could not control all of the time. A couple of bigger roll / pitch movements managed to upset the pesky sat compass again but nowhere near as much as on the run to Falmouth when it really annoyed us. Maybe the settings tweak has helped?

Getting into the Solent (between the Isle of Wight and the mainland) things calmed down and for anyone who was stalking us on AIS, the strange loop we made before entering Lymington was to wait for the outgoing ferry. It was not the autopilot or helmsperson throwing a wobbly. The main engine had a wide open throttle run to give it a clear out and the little wing engine had 15 minutes of exercise too, just to bring it up to temperature and circulate the oil nicely. We were happy to berth in the Dan Bran pontoon as the wind continued to pick up. A little later on, seeing white horses in the Solent itself and 40 knot gusts on the instruments, we realised that the timing had worked out pretty well.

Maintenance News

Before leaving Plymouth the stern gland on the main engine was tightened a little to reduce the drip rate. We mentioned that it started to leak a little too much on the run to Falmouth. Knowing how much to tighten it is always amusing, rather too little than too much is our motto. Reducing the drip rate by half on this run increased the running temperature of the stuffing box from a steady 17c to 20c.Hardly near the pain point of the packing inside it!

The main engine, stabilisers etc all behaved themselves and had been through a good workout so bar a fluid levels check when we arrived, there is nothing else to report. If you like dismembering boats though, you will be in luck soon.