paradave
Well-known member
Yesterday was -4 when I left home and took a while to scrape the frost off the car. The sky was clear though and I really wanted to bring the battery back from my boat and keep in warm and charged up over winter as I’m not on shore power in the dry stack. Driving down to just grab the battery seemed too good an opportunity pass up and I‘d suggested to a friend it might be a good day for a quick blast in the Solent.
We were rewarded with mirror flat water in Portsmouth harbour and the tiniest of swells in the Solent, I’ve genuinely never seen it this flat. It was almost too flat as there was barely a sense of speed you normally get flying over waves, but it enabled us to speed several very cold hours exploring the north side of the Isle of Wight (Cowes, Gurnard Bay, Newtown Creek) before flying back round and mooring at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club for Guinness and a delicious hot lunch.
After a long week at work this was a real tonic and I tried not to look at the consumption figures at full chat (40+l/hr @ 32knts)! Cruising at around 24 knots gave a much more agreeable 20l/hr equating to a pretty good 1.2nm/l.
A fabulous day out and the dry stack makes more and more sense the more I get used to it.
We were rewarded with mirror flat water in Portsmouth harbour and the tiniest of swells in the Solent, I’ve genuinely never seen it this flat. It was almost too flat as there was barely a sense of speed you normally get flying over waves, but it enabled us to speed several very cold hours exploring the north side of the Isle of Wight (Cowes, Gurnard Bay, Newtown Creek) before flying back round and mooring at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club for Guinness and a delicious hot lunch.
After a long week at work this was a real tonic and I tried not to look at the consumption figures at full chat (40+l/hr @ 32knts)! Cruising at around 24 knots gave a much more agreeable 20l/hr equating to a pretty good 1.2nm/l.
A fabulous day out and the dry stack makes more and more sense the more I get used to it.
