What is especially worth noting is that leaving the creek on the very last of the tide means that there is only about an hour of foul tide to fight so its actually a reasonably easy trip from Ashlett, particularly on a neap tide weekend. (Don't forget to call QHM on CH 11 to get permission to cross the shipping channel from the Ballast pile to the Camber entrance).
Saturday morning saw us set sail for Littlehampton via the submarine barrier off Southsea and the Loo Channel off Selsey Bill. It's just over 20 miles and with a bit of careful planning we had the tide with us virtually all the way. The wind strengthened to about a F4 WSW so we had an excellent sail which saw us actually taking in sail to avoid arriving too early. Just before the Loo Channel the crew of Ripping Yarns announced that they had caught half a dozen nice mackerel, so in the true spirit of ASC we declared an impromptu fishing competition (for rag and stick boats only!!) Kouba soon had two lines over the back (one from each hull!!) the deepest line with the flashiest spinners was most effective. By the time we pulled into Littlehampton Ripping Yarns had just won the competition by 15 to 14 and we had enough fish to fed us for a couple of days and more !
Despite its reputation Littlehampton is not really a difficult entrance (certainly not compared to the Creek!!) and so by lunchtime all three boats were safely tied up on the visitors pontoons enjoying the first of our fresh mackerel with locally purchased chips for lunch.
Littlehampton is a seaside town and has all that one can expect including restaurants and tourists a plenty. The afternoons "relaxation" with a few Pimms was brought to an abrupt halt when a chartered 37ft Bavaria started to run amok as he came into the harbour in the freshening wind, his furling gear was jammed and his crew had frozen in the cockpit. Brill nearly got crushed as the Bavaria T-boned a virtually new Southerly moored directly behind us. In the spirit of both seamanlike assistance and natural self preservation there we soon 2 members from the Arun Yacht club in a Rib and 2 members from ASC in the harbourmasters launch swarming aboard like pirates to give a hand before any further damage was done! It all ended safely but I fear another wife / partner may have been scared off sailing forever.
Sunday morning things changed!! We were expecting some drizzle and a F5 but at 0700 it really was not nice at all. So rather than leave with a fair tide which meant that if we took more than 3 hours to reach the Loo Channel we would be left fighting the tide for the 2nd half of the trip we decided to wait till the next tide and leave against the tide but with a prospect of a fair tide after about 3 hours. The inshore forecast was giving 4, 5 occasionally 6 and after a discussion it was agreed that if this became too much for Brill then Geoff would turn back (the benefit of not having to get back for work) We left just after lunch and after 3 hours of pretty hard (motor) sailing Ripping Yarns and Kouba were approaching the Mixon mark off Selsey. Geoff had gone inshore and was about 4 miles behind just off Bognor. He was making pretty good progress when it really started to get rough, we had 32Kts of wind and were shipping green water over the top in 6 - 8ft waves, when we told Geoff this over the radio he decided to turn back and given the conditions we agreed to keep in touch with him every 15mins by radio. This worked fine for about ˝ an hour but on the 3rd call we could not raise him. It was possible that he was just out of range on his handheld but given the beating we were taking we were concerned and it seemed foolish to simply do nothing. So we called up Solent CG and asked for them to put out a call to him on their more powerful transmitter. Eventually after about half an hour Geoff made contact by mobile phone, he was safe but was just so busy sailing the boat that the radio calls had become a distraction and he had to ignore them for a while. He made it safely back to Littlehampton and after a few days sailed back to the Solent via Chichester.
Once around Selsey we were able to set course back to Portsmouth, although we had another minor hiccup when Kouba's nice new engine decide to die if run at over 1500 rpm. The only possible explanation was muck stirred up by the rough weather causing a filter blockage, so we motored rather cautiously into Portsmouth with the agreement that Steve would take us in tow if the engine failed completely. It didn't and changing the filter next morning fixed the problem. By Monday lunchtime Bramblemet was showing a steady 25 knots right on the nose so we decided to leave the Camber at 2pm to give us 4 hours to make it back before first high in the Creek. It certainly was blowing hard on the way back and we registered a couple of gusts of 34 Knots and were well reefed down. Bernie in 19ft Rosina motored about 1/2way to Ryde and then set a well reefed main and storm jib to lay a boisterous port tack straight back to the creek. He arrived only a short while after us and gave a customary cheery wave… how was it we asked … "fine fine" he said casually !!
- - - o o o - - -
Already waiting to meet us back in The Camber was Bernie Lyford in Rosina B, so another convivial evening with beer and fish and chips was had, this time in the Spice Island pub right on the entrance to the harbour. From Camber to Gun Warf is just a short walk so on Monday morning Jude and Maggie led us in a short spot of retail therapy.
The strong gusts that we saw on both days were much at least a force stronger than predicted by the Met office forecasts and XC weather was only giving 15 knots when we were seeing near 30knots over the deck so conditions were certainly rougher than we had expected. However despite the conditions the actual Loo Channel was reasonably benign and I would not have liked to have been offshore going outside the Owers Lanby.
As a footnote Geoff reported that on Monday a number of larger (35-40ft) boats left Littlehampton bound for the Solent but were back after an hour .. too rough even for them so I think Geoff's decision to turn back was certainly proved to be wise.
Overall it was a reasonably hard trip especially for smaller boats but I think its certainly worthwhile including a few cruises in the year which stretch us a little.