Friday, July 31, 2009

Third Time Singlehanded


Well, so much for the "BBQ Summer" that the Met Office promised us. As Positive Weather Solutions put it: "As with 2007 and 2008, the position of the jet stream is unfavourable, and current projections show it may well stay there, meaning, we had our Summer at the end of June and start of July."

So I grabbed what seemed like the first fine day in weeks - or the Friday afternoon at least - and headed out in the hope of beating the next front to come passing through on Friday night.


Not much to say really. It was just a relaxing sail, enjoying my increasing confidence in sailing singlehanded, the spirit of which I've tried to capture in the vid and its soundtrack rather than wittering on about it. You can, incidentally, see the next batch of cloud already building ahead of the looming warm front, as the trip progresses.

One more day's sailing next week - in Cowes Week on Wednesday - then I am off to Italy in search of SWMBO and the bambini...and maybe some reliable sunshine...The long range forecasts say that the weather might improve from late August - fingers crossed.

Conditions: SSE backing E, F3 - F4, mixed cloud and sunshine. Sea state: slight
Distance covered (GPS over ground): 12.4 NM
Total distance covered to date (2009): 124.1 NM
Engine hours: 1.6 (total for 2009: 9.6 hours)

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Arabella's Kid Sister

Chris Waller sent me this great pic of his Pandora International on her first sail of the season, back in April. Arabella's sail number is 535, and as you can see, the sail number on Chris's Pandora is the next in sequence.