Mid-Week Rally to Newtown Creek 15th – 17th June
15th June – Hamble to Newtown Creek
Gillian had decided to stand-down for this trip. I had broken the once per month agreement! Patricia kindly volunteered to come along. She had not ben sailing for the last 2 years since Michael had sadly passed away. It was a poignant trip for her as his ashes were scattered in his favourite anchorage of Newtown Creek. It could not have been a better day – warm and sunny albeit with little wind – hence a gentle motor down to Newtown where we arrived at what we thought would be an early arrival time, expecting plenty of buoys to be available. A bit of a shock when we arrived – absolutely packed. No buoys and we struggled to find a place to anchor. Whilst you have enough depth in Clamerkin Lake, the channel is quite narrow, hence if you put out too much chain there is the risk you swing onto the mud-bank and as the tide goes out you are left a little stranded! We dropped the anchor twice between two boats but there was limited room to swim, so we upped anchor and found a slightly quieter spot. I would like to put the choice of location down to outstanding seamanship as we ended up at low tide with .1m – 4 inches of water beneath the keel. However…… more luck than judgement.
For the evening we went ashore for a BBQ. I cannot remember a more beautiful evening on the water. Gentle breeze, lovely company, stunning sunset. It was quite moving.
16th June – Newtown Creek
As I was getting ready to make breakfast we ran out of gas. On Purrfect Paws I usually carried a spare gas bottle – but I had not got around to it on the new boat. I was half way through working out how to get ashore, walk to a bus stop to go to Yarmouth or Cowes and then travel back, when Maggie and Pat offered to lend me their spare cylinder – phew. That enabled us to spend the late morning and early afternoon walking ashore around Newtown Creek. It was again a lovely day. The power of the sea was brought home to us as we stopped and spent a few moments in silence at a memorial to two brothers who were lost at sea off Hamstead Ledge – one in 1932 and the other in 1934.
The left hand photo is looking down on Newtown Creek and the other out towards Lymington. That evening we had Pat and Maggie across for evening drinks before cooking Patricia’s outstanding chilli for dinner, rounding off the evening with a glass (or two) of whisky from a close friend – Charanpal.
17th June – Unforeseen Events
The day did not get off to a good start and got steadily worse! Anchor had dragged so decided to leave early at low tide. We nearly got out of the creek before hitting mud and grounding. Not too bad, managed to swing off but had to return and pick up a buoy for a couple of hours. Managed to get out at High Water +2 hours. When we did get out at the narrowest point in the channel, water ceased to be be coming out of the exhaust which meant the engine was not being cooled. We dropped anchor as soon as we could and called out SeaStart – the ‘AA’ of the sea. The inlet water filter was completely blocked with seaweed as was the intake pipe. However before he could resolve, he had to tow us to deeper water before we grounded again. We lost a couple of hours but eventually got our sails up to come back the River Hamble. It then started to rain…… a lot! It was so bad visibility was severely reduced and we had to navigate by chart-plotter and AIS which identified what ships were around us. We eventually got back in at 1700hrs, extremely wet. The original idea was to clean down the boat and head home that night but it was late, the boat was in a mess with wet oilies, clothes and boots everywhere. So Patricia kindly offered to buy dinner in the Gaff Rigger, the start of which was a very large glass of white wine! An additional night on the boat was required.
18th June – An Additional and Unexpected Day on the Boat
Up early on the Friday to clean down the boat. Should not take too long – or so I thought. Upon lifting up the steps over the engine I discovered a lot of water beneath the engine. A few minutes panic as I mopped out and tried to work out where it was coming from. It only leaked when the engine was on – so some good news but the bad news was that it appeared to be coming through the sail drive – this was really bad news if true – lift out and major repairs. Called Adam who looks after the boat and he settled the nerves – it was unlikely to be the sail drive if no ingress alarms were going off when the engine started. He ‘encouraged’ me to look again and eventually the source of the leak was found from one of the outlet pipes. This was soon fixed. By 1430 I was ready to go home
Purrfect Tale 