Port Solent, football and Lymington

We needed to escape Gosport and all the NFG types (see earlier post for a translation) and we wanted to polish the seriously neglected port side of the hull. A good spot to do this was Port Solent - locked, quiet and we had a couple of days left on our Premier marinas "great escapes" deal thingy. The perfect solution perhaps? We pottered up to the marina (a huge voyage from Gosport) on a day with neap tides so there was no free flow. We sat in the lock for ages whilst they tried to fix a printing problem with their systems - the captain recalled many many happy hours at work in the IT world and sympathised but resisted trying to help as he is woefully under-qualified.

We managed to polish the remainder of the hull despite the best efforts of the sun to get in the way. We also caught up with Carl and Julie, the Liverpudlian couple who we met in Penarth a while ago. We jinxed the football results by watching the England semi-final with them and making appropriate groaning noises.

Anne came to visit and carelessly left Izzy the spoodle with us. No idea how that happened. We had to amuse her with some ball games:

and the expectation of ball games too:

The brown grass gives you a hint of the awesome weather we have enjoyed for weeks now!

After our labours, we headed back out of the harbour, passing the new navigation aids put in place for the nice new aircraft carriers for the navy:

Chunky things. Even chunkier is the new carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth. However we have  a feeble picture as 1) the sun was in the wrong direction 2) we only had the phone handy to use and 3) the police patrol boats were keeping everyone a long way away from the ship. Here is the feeble result:

Rubbish isn't it! Anyway, as you can see they are still "working her up" i.e. we have lots of tents on the flightdeck so people can do stuff. Good job there are no aircraft to fly off her yet!

Leaving the harbour we witnessed HMS Duncan returning from a 6 month NATO deployment:

flanked by tugs and patrol boats too. We seem very keen to protect our navy from ISIS suicide RIBS etc etc. Hope that the radicals can't buy the recipe for Novichok from Mr Putin when the gas runs out and he needs some cash to keep the Russian economy afloat.

We had a lovely flybridge trip down to Lymington and into the yacht haven there. On the way, we saw one of the superyacht fraternity moored off Cowes. He had a slightly posher arrangement for launching his RIB than our crane and canvas cover setup:

Might well have been one of Mr Putin's mates of course living off Gazprom earnings....

Our favourite spot on the Dan Bran pontoon was full.... How we didn't miss the Solent (and the extortionate berthing fees) in the summer during that last 5 years. Time to escape from this wildly busy area again.

Whilst in Lymington we had a catch up with John and Kath, the owners of the Broom 39 called Prime Time. This year their cruise had been cut short when they picked up what must have been a large chunk of rope near Roscoff which trashed the coupling on one prop shaft and caused a leak. Their poor boat was recovered by road to Lymington for repair. There but for the grace of "someone" go we of course. Discarded or poorly marked rope and nets are a huge hazard.