Our sailing plans for Easter were completely written off. With the weather being so changeable we only actually managed one short trip. A few weeks before Easter we thought about moving the boat to somewhere new for 2024, the trip down to Mercury is around 200 miles each way and with fuel costs only increasing and paying for the M6 toll it was starting to put us off visiting the boat. We really enjoyed being on the River Hamble but we also know from neighbours that the price of the berths there is also increasing, so we thought about heading around, to Portsmouth where we could get a berth with Boatfolk. We’ve also thought about heading north to Wales but when we enquired about this previously there were no spaces in any of the Marina so we’ve added ourselves to all the waiting lists. Just as we were about to start paying for a berth at Portsmouth, we got a call from Deganwy Marina, they managed to find us a space and it looked like we could take that berth from around August. So now the move was on!

Allegra was also due a rigging check this year so we thought before we made this big journey we would get that work completed and then we’d start heading north. This turned out to be a real debacle, and we’re yet to release the video around this but we will shortly. Jump forward a couple of months and it was July, and we were still waiting to get the boat back. We managed to get the boat back two days into our holiday which wasn’t ideal. At 6:30 PM on Tuesday the 23rd of July we had the boat, we had a mast, and we were on our way back to Mercury. 

Back at Mercury

We got the boat ready and we left the very next day. We arrived at the fuel dock filled up with diesel and started to head out. Just as we left the river Christine managed to scrape her leg while getting in the fenders, the boat hook fell off the boat (which it’s never done in four years) and we had to do a man overboard style rescue in the entrance to the river and our new crew member (Nel, the rescue dog) didn’t feel all that well as we headed into the Solent chop towards Newtown Creek. 

A particular highlight was cleaning sick off Nel’s dog bed on the back of the boat as it bounced its way down the Solent. After a couple of hours of this, we decided to spend the night at Newtown Creek. As we entered the narrow channel we noticed that we’d lost depth on the Axiom which wasn’t a problem ’cause it was high tide but it was just another issue that had happened on this very short journey. We tied up to buoy #2, made a cup of tea, got some biscuits, and wondered what the hell was going on. As we sat there drinking the tea, we could smell diesel so we knew we had another fault to try and fix. Once we’d regrouped we started on the problems, it turned out that the diesel leak had come through the sender unit in the top of the tank, the Axiom depth issue just needed a reboot (IT 101) and little Nel was starting to feel a lot better.

An extra night in Newtown

Christine was really pleased to get an extra night in Newtown Creek, it’s a place all of us have loved since day one. Unfortunately, I was now feeling a little bit unwell, at this stage, it just felt like a cold but we decided to postpone our planned trip to Studland Bay to the following day, Thursday ended up being a write-off weather wise, it was like a late autumn day with rain and fog – British summers eh? This meant that we could leave slightly later because of the tides, and I could hopefully shake off this cold. We managed to get ourselves across to the beach on Friday morning and Nel had her first walk on the sand. Friday afternoon we made our way across to Studland Beach, it was finally looking like a break in the westerlies and a light easterly wind was going to appear either Saturday or Sunday morning. Catherine was pleased because she got two nights in Studland Bay (another of our favorite anchorages). 

We spent a day at the beach and we had a lovely pub meal. This marked the end of our first week, we had only managed to travel about 36 miles and the pressure was now on to try and catch up.

Time to go

Sunday morning 5:00 AM the alarm sounded, the light easterly winds that were promised had arrived and it was time now to head down the coast as far as we possibly could to try and make up some time. Just as the sun was rising, several yachts headed out of Studland Bay, around Durlston head and caught the tide down the coast towards St Alban’s head. It was a lovely flat calm day, the wind was very light, and the sun was now in the sky. At St Alban’s ledge, we came across a little bit of disturbed water which managed to wake Catherine up (a feat in itself) before we crossed the bay and headed towards Portland Bill. Around 7:45 AM we were at the Bill, we managed to do a minimum of eight knots and a maximum of ten down the coast. The goal was to pass the Bill before 9am. It looked like the promised wind was going to be extremely light throughout the day so it was looking more like a day of motoring. Allegra’s cafe opened around 11:00 and we had sausage butties sat on the back in the sunshine. Shortly after we decided to deploy the spinnaker to see if we could sail a little bit of this rather than motoring the whole way, that lasted for about an hour, and then the engine went back on and we motored for the rest of the day. We saw a lot of dolphins – always great when they spend time with you.

We passed Brixham and the River Dart and as we rounded the head towards Salcombe we had just finished dinner and we decided that after 12+ hours of motoring, we were going to call it a day and head into Salcombe for the night. The wind hadn’t picked up, so it was likely that during the evening and night, we would end up motoring as well – nobody really fancied that, so the hope was that the next day the wind might improve. 

Salcombe

The entrance to Salcombe is quite dramatic with steep cliffs on either side of the channel, it also features a bar which means you need a little bit of tide to get in. As we got into the river, we were met by the harbour master and assigned a visitor buoy for the evening. 

We sat on the back of the boat as the sun set watching all the activities that were happening in the river, boats were going left and right with little lights twinkling away – Magic.