Goodbye to Brixham

They say that patience is a virtue but I know that I am not very patient. However, if you rush to go somewhere in a small boat, when the weather is not ideal, then you may not live to regret it.



The end of April came and went. On the evening of the 15th May we finally saw a potential drop in the high winds that have plagued us for so long. This, we hoped, would enable us to cruise the 85 miles to the Solent. We set off at 7:00 am to catch the tide in the right direction and programed in to the GPS a stop at Weymouth. The weather was not perfect but good enough to keep going. After 20 miles you can't see land in any direction and we had reached the point of no return. It was as close to continue to Wemouth as turn back to Brixham - so we carried on. As we approached Portland Bill we could see a very large ship on our route, but not on the radar. As we got closer we could see that it was a Naval Warship. It did not actually appear on our radar until we were only 4 miles away, by which time we could see it very clearly indeed. I don't know what they paint them with but it makes them look like a small fishing vessel on the radar. We chose to go around it.



The sea had calmed down so we decided to head for the Solent in one hop. Five hours after we left Brixham we were mooring in Lymington; greatly relieved that we had finally managed to travel past Portland Bill without incident. If you have watched the air sea rescue program you will know what I mean.

Brixham

Time for a break now. Jomima is clean, polished and painted ready for the new season. Hopefully the next journey will be to the Solent at the end of April. We are heading back to Nottingham for a rest after all our hard work. However, I managed to get an engineer in to change the oil and filters for the two gear boxes. Everything in power boats seems to be on a large scale. With two 6 litre diesel engines I suppose it has to be to cope with the high torque loads. It will be interesting to see how they perform with everything from a channel crossing to rivers and canals to cope with planned for this season. More news when we begin our next journey.