Assistance for a novice Brighton to Shoreham

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Newman

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Afternoon all

Being a complete novice, having recently had assistance to bring my first boat from Ipswich to Brighton, I now need to have it lifted out at Shoreham. I have booked a liftout at 16.00 this Friday. I am cringing at what most of you must be thinking "Brighton to Shoreham !" "Assistance ?".

The truth of the matter is I have not been able to get down to the boat in the short time I have had it and therefore have a definite lack of practice/experience.

I intend leaving my car at Shoreham for the return trip back to Brighton marina, so if anyone based there is at a loose end this Friday ................... ?

Just thought I would ask (you just never know until you ask).

BTW the boat is a 1990 Bavaria 300, wheel steering, 9.55m ............

Thanks in advance
 
what exactly are you asking for?
are you asking someone to help you sail it Brighton to Shoreham on Friday morning/afternoon? If so i may be interested!
 
Brighton to Shoreham

The boat is booked to be lifted at Sussex Yacht Club this Friday (8th) at high tide (16.00.).

As Sussex Yacht Club is only 5(ish) miles from Brighton I assume it will only take an hour(ish) to cover the journey.

On this basis I assume 'cast off' should be in the region of 15.00(ish)

Hopefully lift out should be on arrival. My car will be at Shoreham for the return journey to Brighton marina.

That's the plan. Without a plan there would be nothing to change !

Regards
 
OK, checked with the memsahb (spelling!) and am ok to lend a hand. Caution: just 'cos I got a boat does NOT make me an expert, more handy deck crew, but if you're ok with that, I'm game. Send me a personal message via the forum with a contact number and I'll get back to you.
 
You need to allow way more than 1 hour! 10mins to get out of Brighton and 15mins to get up to Sussex Yacht Club (at least) i think you need to slip 2hours before lift out.
 
And there I was thinking 1 1/2 hours would be ok. Deary me....Right I'm getting to the marina at 1pm then. Are you going to join in? Nice to meet some fellow forumites' and we can regale each other with tales of nautical derring-do etc!
 
Yes you want a couple of hours. A bit of time to get out of Brighton, an hour passage and half an hour from harbour entrance to the crane at SYC.
That's if you're just motoring up, if you're going to sail with a SW coming, allow 3 (or more)! Got enough fuel left from last trip? If you need it at SYC it's take a can to the Jet garage 50 yards away.
Watch for shipping coming out from the lock and hugging the east side of the entrance. There shouldn't be anything much at that state of tide though.
Turning left into the river don't go too near the poles, stay in the middle.
Don't go much beyond the end of the slip at SYC there is a big mudbank in the middle! Don't go near the other bank either, stay on the SYC side.

HW on Friday is 17.20BST. At 16.00BST EasyTide says there will be about 5.25m tide. The end of the slip is at about 4m tidal height so I think you might be waiting a bit longer - can't remember your draft. You can see a depth scale on the scrubbing posts now and the crane can get down to them. The concrete starts a bit outboard of them.
I guess Ben is leaving you in slings until Monday? Bit late on a Friday to start setting up a cradle. Have a good scrub over the weekend! :)

Hey you'll be able to go to the new members evening and stay on the boat! No drinky probs! Bonus!

Mike
 
Brighton to SHM is about 6.5m. You will be stemming the tide all the way, notwithstanding any eddies.

I'd anticipate about 15-20 kt SW on Friday, wind over tide so tie everything down and don those oilies.

Allowing 10 minutes messing about at Brighton, two hours to sail to SHM and 30 minutes to get to the hoist and sort yourself out I make that a minimum of a 1:30 departure with time for a sundowner when you arrive early.

P.s., I make it a 5.8m tide, plus a little more for the 1000mb low pressure, so no doubt they'll be able to lift you out by at least 15.55... :0)

There is no real penalty for arriving at SHM too early, beyond having to either anchor or run aground on the beach in the outer harbour until the water gets there. There is mostly very soft mud in the far eastern end, so much so that my old fin keeler would sit practically to her marks on the mud there.

Watch out for the shallow water on the port (South) side of the river just after Emerald Quay (the fancy new flats)

Listen out on CH14 and watch for the traffic lights on the middle pier - This is a fairly quiet commercial port, but there is not really enough room for a ship to leave the western arm and anything else to simultaneously enter.

Mike 'Troubador''s advice +1

If I don't have to go up to Cambs. on Friday I'll be there to cast aspersions on your mooring technique :0)

P.M. me for mobile No. - may be able to run you to Brighton after car drop.
 
If you want an electrical and mechanical engineer along to help out (thats me !), then PM me, i'll be down that way on friday with not much to do and happy to come along to lend a hand/fix anything that breaks on the way !!
 
Well, we made it. I can certainly say that Newman has got a very nice boat and one well capable of taking a bit 'o rough.
Henceforth the Saga of Intrigue:

Bright was the morning and high our hearts as we stood upon the pontoon and surveyed our craft. "Wotja think then, will she do it?". Well yes, I thought she would. A Bavaria 300 (age unknown to me) in good nick, just needing the genoa hanked on (that's another story!) to provide a steadying influence when we ventured outside.....that was my theory, anyway. So all got suited up in foulies (this was a VERY good idea as we found out about 10 minutes later), a last check that all hatches battened down and below decks secured for sea (hindsight suggests that a catch on the oven door would be no bad idea).
A last call to the marina office to announce our departure for Shoreham and cast off.
TopDonkey on the helm, where in fact he stayed for the entire trip and what a fantastic job he made of it, far better than I would have done. Full throttle out of the marina and due South for about half a mile and then the fun really began (end of part one).
 
Burrrrp, oh boy. Right, where was I? OK, we headed out of the entrance and realized what we were facing close up and personal, waves to 2 metres and wind steady 20, gusting on occaision to 30-35 I guess. We were hit by a wave about 1.5m high, not too bad we thought until we saw the trough on the other side.....SLAMM! and the nose buried itself in the next wave, mucho spray....spray? more like a tsunami, ho, ho, were we glad we put on wets. The next hour saw us make suprisingly good progress and took us past the old west pier, not bad considering that we were effectively having to head southwest most of the time, south into the waves and west when we could. We had intended to use our 2 i-phones and and my HTC (all equiped with Navionics) to chart our progress, that plan went RIGHT out of the window, as we could see that it would have been a straight recipe for new phones all round. So we resorted to the time honoured Luddite philosophy of looking around for land marks, or pilotage I think it's called. Served us well, when I say us, it was more like the others, as by this time I had gone conspicuously quiet, looking at the shore with longing eyes.... eventually I swapped with Len to the lee side, just as well, 'cos 2 minutes later I well and truly chundered. Someone posted on another thread how much it hurts to heave on an empty stomach....I'd forgotten how right they were. From this point on I was more of a liabilty than an asset, but managed to make some input, to whit TopDonkey (also Ian) asking when we should turn towards Shoreham harbour entrance. I suggested that we go past about a quarter mile and then head straight for the entrance, surfing the waves. We all agreed (I had looked up the boat on yatchsnet archives and thought she'd respond OK to a following sea) and we whizzed towards the entrance, me chundering over the side again! and then bliss! as we reached the shelter of the breakwaterand turned to port to follow the Adur to SYC. One more chunder and I started to feel a bit less like dying an dmore like taking an active part in the proceedings. We had quite a bit of water under us by then, but not quite enough to get into the slings, so we went about and let out some genoa. TopDonkey wa squite impressed with the way Intrigue immediately made way under half headsail, so much so that he turned off the engine and and remarked that we were moving cost free. As he has a mobo, twin engined I think, I could see that a potential convert to sail was in the making. By this time I was feeling much better and we were able to time our arrival at the slip almost to perfection. The lift out went ahead at about 16:10, so 2 hours 10 minutes after we headed out of Brighton, including our little sail up and down the Adur. A trip I shan't forget in a hurry and educational to boot. I think that I'm going to be a fair weather, sheltered water sailor from here on, although Len mentioned something about racing in the future. Hmm, I think I may need Stugeron before that!!
 
Even though it was only a 7 mile trip (although i think we turned it into about 15 miles with the amount of zig zagging we had to be because of the big waves!), I thoroughly enjoyed it, and all my training and experience instantly came back to me as soon as i opened the throttle to move out from the berth, although i wasn't expecting so little response from the helm, but with a saildrive, and the rudder being about a mile away from the prop !!, and the amount of extra push the wind had on the boat because of the huge mast, I do prefer my mobo with twin diesels on outdrives for maneuverability, i can moor it to perfection with the amount of control i have, but with a sailing boat, its about 'getting it in quick' before the bow drifts out again !!

The other thing we learnt, is that its not good to put a permanently open vetus type vent on the front hatch when you are ploughing through waves for 2 hours, the front cabin was soaked which wasnt good, i think we took on about 20 litres of sea water, and sailing boots are a must in F6 conditions, i might be inside and dry on my mobo with the heating on and the doors shut, but on a yacht, you are out there with the elements getting very wet feet lol !! :)

It looks like there will be a return trip to be done next friday too, so depending on the weather, we could be up for even more excitement :)

Len (newman) managed a minute or two of video on his iphone from under the sprayhood, and i cant wait to see them, youtube is a good place for them :)
 
Hiya, thought I'd better post summat for folks on t' forum (huge burrp again, 'scuse me). The missus has said we're off for a few days away from wednesday, so you'll probably have to manage without my help(?!) somehow I don't think you'll have any problems!! Re the water ingress, I think that when we buried the bow after that first slam was when most of that happened and we just added to the collection after that. I wish I'd gone up front to check that instead of just glancing to see that the clips were in place, coulda prevented that.....or could we? Did it have any means of closing it completely?
 
Hi Ian

No, it was a fixed permanently open vent, the sort you would put on a river cruiser that only has to deal with rain, certainly not up to dealing with waves breaking on the bow!.

I think it will be time to replace that one with something properly waterproof, or just glue a piece of lexan across it, but for now, just some heavy duty black plastic duck taped across it for any heavy weather cruising will do temporarily, but the tape will need renewing every week or so as it degrades pretty quickly i've found
 
Thanks for an interesting, honest account guys; even a short trip in those waves - especially with those 2 entrances to get out then in - would have had a lot of people cancelling the hoist.

For info, the more common tannoy vents made by ECS do offer a fully closeable inner unit- if you check & specify it, the inside cowling slides up & down to close & open - which I am always amazed is not standard on all boats thinking of a tannoy; with a bit of luck it may fit the same aperture as the vetus job ( I mean a whole new tannoy ).
 
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Oh, just before I barfed, I did think of saying, "are we ok to go on", believe me. But that woulda been letting the side down, what, what, so I kept my mouth shut........and threw up out my nose instead.......'scuse me, I'll be right back.:D
 
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