Just keep on movin'

Birmingham, 15th April 2002

A late start saw us prep the boat, watching a huge group of joggers running along the hillside. Things got more interesting when we saw that the lifeboat had gone out on a rescue and an ambulance had arrived at the harbour. It turns out that there was a local race on for the yacht club and the skipper of one the boats had got stuck up the mast with a broken arm. We gave them a hand mooring, and then headed back to our boat to head off. Leaving the harbour we passed the rest of the racing fleet coming back in warning us of the pretty horrible conditions out there.

We got out to find actually quite reasonable conditions and felt like seasoned sea dogs after our battles of the night before. With the Skipper wanting to catch up on sleep from the night before it was just Tim and the crew on deck. What was interesting was Tim's change in manner from being mate to now being in control. You got an idea of his style, if he were skipper, which was is a way more relaxed than Dave's. After the debacle of the reefing the night before, we motor sailed with the full main sheeted right in and practiced reefs all morning. By lunch I wasn't feeling too hot - we'd got the head sails back out and were sat on the rail as usual pounding into the waves. I just about managed a sandwich, but basically most of the day was just travelling to get somewhere. During late afternoon I had another stretch on the helm, and was able to get into the groove quite a bit more than previous times, heading towards Portsmouth as the evening drew on.

Through the submarine barrier and finally into Gosport we speed cook and eat a very welcome chicken curry (I think just about anything hot would have been welcome). As a reward for the trip so far we got a trip into town for a quick visit to the pub. Dave gave us a strict curfew but given I didn't really have the energy to stand up or even drink; staying for more drinks after the first one wasn't really an option.