Lyn's Log, 1st April 2005: England, London to Plymouth
 

Plymouth, England. N50º22', W4º08'. 380 miles.

On 21st January 2005 the weather set fair for us to leave Limehouse, London and sail to Dover. It was good to be on the move again, after four months in Limehouse Basin. At Dover, our old base, we could meet and spend time with all our old friends in the White Cliffs Motorboat & Yacht Club while Andrew continued to work until his job finished with a conference in Brussels in March. We endured the worst winter for some years with inches of snow on the deck for a couple of weeks.

We had a wonderful send-off from Dover, leaving early on Sunday 6th March for Gosport. The trip was not without incident. After leaving Brighton in a head wind we motored through the Looe Channel just before dark and could turn the boat off the wind, which was just as well because the engine decided to fail. By accident we had emptied one of the fuel tanks and the lines were full of air which just could not be bled off. So we sailed to Gosport, obtaining clearance from the Queen's Harbour Master to enter Portsmouth harbour without an engine, where we were towed without charge into Haslar Marina.

While in the Solent, the photographer from Yachting Monthly came and took photos of us first inside the yacht, then sailing outside the Hamble River. We hope this will provide them with stock photographs of us if we are able to write anything exciting about our travels. We have not yet seen the results.

After a few days we continued on our way, first to Poole harbour, and then on to Weymouth, but we were going so fast with the tide, specially with the races round the headlands, we continued straight on to Brixham. We sailed through the middle of the Portland Race at the height of the tide, bumpy but we covered 11 miles over the ground in one hour!

We reached Plymouth at the end of March, where we spent three weeks with Andrew's family while we built a dinghy (see here).