Is the freedom (and fun) of sailing in the UK a thing of the past

Totally agree with the thrust of your comments.

I came across an anxious looking chap pacing up and down the pontoon at Lymington one day last year. I asked if he had a problem and he replied that he had been planning a trip to Cowes and his guests were due to arrive in half an hour but the chart plotter had packed up and now they wouldn't be able to go!!!!!
 
I now have a self imposed ban in place on buying toys for the boat. It comes after buying a £80 lappy for chartplotting (never used in anger) a PDA programme (likewise)
tidal programme (tide times just as good) and spending many drinking vouchers on replacing the log transducer (look over the stern - if there's wake, the boat's moving).
The trigger was my browsing eBay for a DSC VHF, then realising I never use the radio anyway.
The reality is that looking for and buying kit is done at work or home as a substitute for actually being on board
 
Fortunately he is wrong to think that the Solent is like this as well. Yes, if you only ever sail (or motor) a boat that relies on electronic gizmos, always visit the (self-styled) best marinas on a Saturday or else hang around the entrance to the Hamble then you'll get the feeling that you are in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.

But for my ideal sail: (and Nigel Luther sometimes sails from the same creek so maybe he'll back me up): get down to the boatyard on a Friday evening. Dinner in the "Maypole", a pleasant country pub. Row out to the boat and have a nightcap under the stars, listening to the fish jump and the oystercatchers, redshanks and curlews whistle. Being neaps, you set off straight after breakfast. Not that many marina denizens around at that time of the morning. Sail up one of the most interesting waterways in the country, never a dull moment. Wave to the tourists on the ferries, also the cruise liners. Wave to the dolphins at Horse Sand fort as well if you're really lucky. Towards the end of the day, decide on your final destination: Gosport if there's been no wind, Cowes or the Folly on average and Lymington, Beaulieu or Yarmouth if there's been a decent wind abaft the beam. Sneer at the "Solent rigged" yachts that have motored instead of sailing if you so desire.

The return trip is much the same, but you have the added frisson of wondering if you'll get back to the yard before the tide goes out, the possibility of saying hello to Sammy the Seal in the creek and clouds of multi coloured dinghies criss-crossing your path, solely to provide you with a suitable spectacle to end a perfect weekend.

The Solent is busy because so many other people realise its a wonderful place: about a dozen deep-water harbours all within a day-sail of each other and in the lee of the Isle of Wight. You can "follow the rails" and find that the world is overpopulated, full of fashion victims and over reliant on the trappings of the electronic age. Or as I do, and thousands of others, just go sailing to get away from it all. If you set out to enjoy yourself, you'd be surprised at how often you can succeed.
 
Grumpy old git - bl**dy right

school runs, tesco, shopping, shed roof, lawn, list as long as yer arm... Sailing pass in jepardy for next weekend if I don't behave,,

AND me passport's gone off into the dark void to be renewed so I can't even slip away to the boat for essential maintainance......



Ian
 
I guess I must just be boring. I love sailing, every minute of it. I sailed in the 70's had to give up and have come back to it recently. IMHO things seem to have improved in general. One example being roller reefing.

If electronic navigation aids give more people the confidence to go cruising, I'm all for it. Even with all the extra people around it's still fairly easy to get away from them and it all....
 
Always enjoyed the week day sailing, even more the winter stuff .. always room , no twits about etc...

Been spoiled a bit this summer 80 degrees in shorts no tides no radio checks, plenty of room..

Ian
 
Pah, that roller reefing will never catch on. And as for needing 10 billion dollars of US military satellite just to find your way across the cahnnel, when all Drake used to do was to sail South until you reached France..... kids today (etc.)
 
The Solent is a great place to be, and you can have it pretty well to yourself other than the commercial boys , simply by timing it right. Basic rules for Solent sailing:

1. Forget Cowes and the Hamble exist as sailing venues.
2. Start your sailing season in November and lay up around mid April, or early May. It will do your garden no end of good too!
3. If you must sail out of season (i.e. June - September):
a) FORGET Bank holidays - go in to work and earn some overtime.
b) Ditto weekends 2.00pm friday to 4.00pm sunday.
c) Never go out if the wind is less than F7

Follow these basic rules and you will pretty well have the place to yourself.
 
Somewhere at home I have a slide I took in Yarmouth in August. It was Wednesday and there were about four boats there, including the ferry.
 
Re:weekday Sailing

Im a bit spoilt as I work lots of weekends so tend to sail weekdays. Believe it or not sometimes I miss the crowded locks and busy pubs twits afloat etc. but on average im not complaining /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

we had 80°f this summer in the Bristol Channel.......... once. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
i know we should keep a listening watch and recently (first time in 30 odd years sailing)I actually overheard and relayed a channel 16 mayday not heard by the Coastguard.

turned out to be a MOB the crew sorted themselves out without help in the end.

BUT Im sorry to admit that if the noise starts intruding on my peace then it gets turned off.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Blue ensigns, so what - if the owner is daft enough to pay the price for his trophy flag,

[/ QUOTE ]

I resent that statement. My blue ensign cost no extra money, merely an issue of a warrant from my association. I wear it with pride from having completed 30 years of military service. Please get your facts straight /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif
 
Re: A bit of Nigel sanity

Thanks, Nigel. It is folk like you who have given me the confidence to just go do what I want to do the best way I can.

I sail a little 2 berth cruiser a foot longer than my racing dinghy but the similarity in length and sailing under jib and main are where the comparison ends. She is built like a bigger cruising boat and handles like one too so is a totally different expeience from the dinghy.

When I get to sail her it is on Loch Torridon, enclosed by the mountains and largely protected from the bigger Atlantic swells. I sail with a compass and. this year, with a fishfinder. I carry a handheld VHF. That's the limit of the technology. I do venture out of the Loch and will sail round the coast to nrth or south in future now I have the measure of the boat.

There is no need for more than that and even the addition of the fishfinder was more fun than essential tool but it has already greatly increased my understanding of the water I sail in.

When I pass close enough to another boat I give a wave and always get one back. People are often what you make them.

As a newcomer to this kind of leisure sailing I originally felt very selfconcious of the primitiveness of my boat and her equipment but much less so now. I felt that others might see it as foolish or beneath them but not any more. I don't need the other stuff to enjoy what am doing. I have a lightweight set of bright yellow breathable oilies bought from a work clothing supplier and they have been great. I wear my heavier dinghy boots on the boat as I often have to wade in deeper water than wellies allow and I hate wellies anyway. All in all I must look a pretty impoverished sight but I it doesn't affect how much I enjoy sailing.

I am convinced that it is only in certain locations that all the trendy, mortgage expanding sailing gear is de riggeur (sp) and that everywhere else people just accept you as you are, another sailing addict.
 
Re: Jeez!...

"Apprentice Curmudegon" eh?

Well, a couple of seasons on the Orwell, Sir, and your apprenticeship will be complete.

You have a choice of four chandlers (one big and full of clothes and gadgets, one small, one intelligently run but pricy, one mainly dinghies and outboards), five marinas (none cheap), two waterside pubs, both not-what-they-were, one non-waterside pub that serves excellent food but does not take children, one beach that you can get to at high water for twenty minutes by dinghy if you are clever and determined, one traditional waterside village with Arthur Ransome associations,(not quite completely ruined yet) one ancient Snotti Yotti club with own marina, two decent-but-humble clubs, three soi-disant clubs established in and by marinas, wall to wall swinging moorings (none cheap), at least two sailing schools, two marine engineers, neither ever knowingly undercharging, two yottitronics places, three yottibrokers, couple of sailmakers, two racing series (both serious) about 8,000 yots and mobos, and at least two spots where one can still anchor clear of moorings, all on six miles of water - in fact this part of the yottiverse is as yet COMPLETELY UNSPOILED...
 
Initiative test

...finding the beach, and the pub with decent nosh.

Hardly anyone knows where they are!

The good news is that few of the gadarene hordes go round the corner into the Stour, 'cos they think its all muddy there, and there are even times, outside July and August, when you can safely anchor in Walton Backwaters without swinging into someone!

Don't bother with the Deben, though, it has crocks like me in it.
 
Re: Jeez!...

Crikey, and youse mudpluggers go on about how crowded the Solent is. 50% more boats than in Chichester harbour but half the number of pubs! It was never that bad when I wuz at Maylandsea.... /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
I remember the time when VHF was first introduced for small boats.
All the magazines were running articles on having one on board with all the old shellbacks on the letter pages saying, “You won’t find me using one of those newly fangled things, “wot if my battery goes flat” cause in them days the most common way to signal a Mayday was to fly the ensign upside down and rely on the coast watchers. or passing ships.
Nowadays a lot seeing that would probably think it signaled, the skipper’s pissed.
I remember the first Beaulieu boat jumble ( they said it would never catch on, “to muddy”).
Also the first Southampton boat show ( “in a car park with bridges, it`s got no chance”)
To go from Poole to the Needles we had to go round a bloody great oil rig and (joy of joy) I remember Poole bridge opening with all the traffic stopped in both directions as I swanned through all on my own.

Is it better now? Apart from the dramatic advance in technology I think things are much the same, a wise skipper will always keep his `dead reckoning` up to date as even if you have all the modern navigation aids available to man fitted to your boat, there`s still the thought, “wot if my battery goes flat?"

……..
 
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