Beaulieu river trip update

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arfa

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I went upriver to bailey's hard as suggested by forumites but there was a rather loud band playing at one of the rather nice houses along the river on saturday night - it looked like a cracking bash and one that would run all night. As I was uninvited i thought it best to move on and decided to head back down the river and the kind folk at bucklers hard fitted me in by moving a rib - many thanks to them. I know it cost a bit but at least i had a shower after a longer than expected trip from chichester (wind on the nose, dodging shipping and racing).
Only drawback was that the master builder stopped serving food early as the chef couldn't cope so no hot meal for me /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif
A few thoughts from my singlehanded trip:
Could the Cowes race organisers post the details of times and courses and the web ? It would make it alot easier to dodge them and who would want to interfere with the racing ?
Could the extreme 40 cats find somewhere else to showboat ? i had them carving across me on Saturday and dealing with them is bad enough in an unextreme 21 footer but their groupies in the ribs created such huge wash that it regularly brought me to a standstill. I couldn't have given them a wider berth without going for a stroll on calshot...
Whoever put a racemarker buoy 100 yards of lepe point needs to understand that if racing is going to use the entire navigable reach of the solent (yachts were rounding it well wide whilst kites were dropped) then other shipping is going to have to cross the racing line - this did not seem to be well understood by competitors today /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif especially when i was crossing the racing line on starboard /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
Does the solent attract nutters ? I witnessed two doses of five short blasts with horn (one off portsmouth and one off Cowes) both off them seemed like lunacy on the part of the respective skippers as brittany ferries and maersk containers were highly visible on the day.
Anyway enough of my ramblings, the only real point is that if you wish to escape the solent madness, you'd be well advised to head upstream on the beaulieu river /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
>Could the Cowes race organisers post the details of times and courses and the web ? It would make it alot easier to dodge them and who would want to interfere with the racing ?<

Actually, they do, and they're broadcast on Cowes Week radio, but it wouldn't help you much with passage planning, coz they don't decide courses until they see the actual weather, so often only a few mins before the race start.

Sorry to be blunt, but if you can't cope with sharing the water with racing boats, stay out of the Solent, esp at weekends.

We had a perfectly stress-free sail yesterday, despite being cheek-by-jowl with Class 1 for much of the afternoon.
 
I've no problem with racing boats and managed to avoid all but one race over the weekend. The only folks who had a problem were with me crossing their racing line on starboard - no other choice I'm afraid.
 
Beaulieu is lovely, or at least it used to be, a bit busy now for my liking, but that's the Solent all over I suppose. I had my very first sailing experience in the early seventies a Buckler's Hard. My grandfather kept his boat in a mud berth just down stream from the swathe of green which leads down to the water. On a recent visit, the first for about 30 years, I was pleased to see that the berths are still there, although no longer appear to be used. I also remember spending an afternoon on a mudbank there and being bemused at my grandfather's antics in the dinghy with the kedge! Everything is a mystery when you are only 6. He's long gone now, but those early experiences obviously planted a seed.
 
Yes, I'm sorry about that - I didn't know about the party, which was in full swing when we got back from Yarmouth on Saturday evening (our mooring lies just off the house in question). It did, indeed, look like a cracking do and the band sounded excellent but I'm glad we weren't staying overnight on the boat /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif.

It's normally much quieter there - honest.
 
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...Could the Cowes race organisers post the details of times and courses and the web ? ...

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Basically during Cowes Week it is all day, every day and everywhere in the Solent, with some spilling out into Christchurch Bay.
 
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