A windy weekend

Toucando had the first weekend of September off.  The following week the winds began in earnest, said to be the tail end of Hurricane Katia.  I got a call from the marina saying, "Please ring as SOON as possible!"  That sounded alarming.  The news was that the jib had partially unfurled and was flapping uncontrollably.  To cut the story short, Alan from the marina went out in the launch, got the damaged sail down and lashed it to the deck.  We're not sure quite how much wind there was... Sotonmet said gusts of 195 (which is not believable).  Other sources said 50 to 60 knots.  It was certainly very strong.

I went down to Southampton on Friday not knowing what the jib would look like.  It turned out to have an L-shaped rip maybe about two feet in each direction.  The sail was taken ashore and I got the boat ready for the weekend crew: Michele and Sarah P.  It remained windy and the forecast was mentioning everything between Force 4 and 8 for the weekend.  We had venison goulash aboard on Friday evening and agreed to set off on Saturday. We decided to take the cautious approach and stay fairly local.  Plan A had been to go to Chichester Harbour with Southampton Sailing Club, but they had decided against it on the basis of the forecast.  We decided to go and do a bit of sailing in Southampton Water and see what it was like.  To begin we had some practice handling Toucando under power and a bit of a tour of the docks.  We then decided to head for Hamble where we stayed at Port Hamble Marina.  We took a walk into the village and enjoyed a drink or two at the Bugle, before returning to Toucando for pirate stew.

On Sunday it seemed fairly calm at first.  We made a reasonably early start, motoring up river to begin, then turning and raising the mainsail with two reefs.  We sailed out into Southampton Water.  The wind was very variable... never much less than a four and often gusting well into force six and seven.  We had a good and fast sail up towards Weston where we practised tacking and heaving to, gradually polishing our technique. Eventually we turned for the Itchen and went back to Toucando's mooring.  There was a strong westerly wind blowing us on to the pontoon which made sorting out all the fenders a little tricky, but we got it all done before having a late lunch.  Thanks to Michele and Sarah for their help.

Once the crew had gone I drove (the car) to Lee on Solent for a walk along the beach.  It was a bright, sunny afternoon, but the winds were strong, and all the waves had white tops. There were plenty of walkers, fishermen, kite fliers, wind surfers etc., but I only counted two sailing boats, both well reefed, on the Solent.  On Monday I took the jib to the sail maker... and was pleased to discover that it is repairable.  The sail will now get a wash and full service.  I am hoping that we will get a few good weekends before long... it's time the hurricane season was over.

Here are three pictures from the weekend (courtesy of Michele):