Spitbank...

Having been slightly disappointed by Sunday's lack of wind I decided to take a day off and go for a long sail this week - having checked the forecasts it looked like yesterday was going to be good, and so it was that yesterday found me on the boat at 8:30 motoring for the mouth of the harbour ...  my plan was to head west as most of my long trips out of the harbour up to now have been either south (Nab twice) or south west (Seaview), and I wanted to see how long it would take to get as far west as I could before having to turn for home - I have a trip to Cowes planned for next month, so this was advance planning.... 

My initial thoughts were that I was in for a good day as there was a nice breeze stirring the water as I came round the corner and turned south down the Chichester Channel towards HISC, but not wanting to waste any time I pushed on for the open sea under engine...(one tank took me all the way - maybe half an inch left in the internal tank - pretty good I'd say). Speeds were good though - tide and engine make for fast travel...

09:30 and I was at the West Pole Beacon - turned the engine off, and then wallowed and drifted for 30 minutes or so....  no wind and a glassy sea, but just across the way about half a mile away the sea was darker and I could see wind - so motored over and then we were off....  the following comes from OpenCPN...  you can see the course out as the one further south at West Pole... basically a flattened figure of eight...

Took my Netbook with me as I was interested to find out how long it would last - it finally shut itself down at about 14:00 so I got about 6 hours out of the battery...  if I want to go longer then I'm going to have to think about secondary power supplies....

Wind direction was good - felt like south of south west (it wasn't..) so apart from a small tack just to clear the end of Horse Sands I made it all the way from the West Pole to the inner passage on the submarine barrier (the pink dotted line with question marks on the map) on one tack....  tide against naturally, but I was getting between 2 and 2.5 knots all the way

Southsea (Portsmouth) ahead - Spinnaker Tower looms over all...

When I got to the barrier it was pretty clear why - I was expecting an adverse tide (nothing you can do leaving at the time I did), but it was fairly tearing through that little gap as I went through against it...

Inner Passage - submarine barrier - about 25 yards wide, and about 50 yards from the beach - slightly disconcerting!

Once through the barrier I bore away to leave a gap around the end of the pier and carried on past Southsea Castle crossing the main shipping channel at the "Castle" starboard mark..

Interesting times - it's a big old channel when you're in a small boat only doing a couple of knots - naturally I looked "both ways" before crossing, but was still caught out by one of the cross channel ferries who was way away on the horizon when I started to cross but was bloody close when I decided valour was the better part and turned on the engine to scoot the last 50 yards!

This guy snuck up on me while I was trying to get across the main boat channel - they don't hang about!

Objective achieved, and with the entrance to the Harbour on my left, and me on the correct side of the channel if I'd wanted to carry on in (I didn't - it would have been down wind and a fag to get back) ..

Objective - Portsmouth Harbour - main channel to the right, Gosport on the left

...and with just a pause to look at the newly re-furbed Spitbank fort..

Spitbank Fort

...which was looking very smart - lot of new concrete on top - I turned for home....

..and found myself on what can only be described as an express walk way - it took me about 4 hours all told to get to the harbour entrance, I was back in an hour!

Went this time via the outer submarine barrier passage - you can just about see the tide round the bottom...

Port mark - Outer submarine barrier passage...

Simply superb sail back, tide behind you, broad reach, decent breeze, and I was doing high 4's and 5 knots all the way back; if I'd known (and I do now) I'd have considered going a little further before turning for home...

Shifting!

Quite possible the best sail I've ever had in Pap - ideal conditions for a Fantasie 19, top end 2, flat'ish water, full rig....  superb!

Turned for the harbour at the West Pole and had an interesting run into the harbour goosewinged - as always seems to happen it swung slightly once I got into the harbour but it was still a superb sail up the harbour - water was even flatter and we flew up there....

Got back to the top of the harbour about 15:30, high tide was at 19:00 so I was a bit early, but my plan was to find a deep water mooring going free, tidy up and then get the book out (and maybe a beer and a cigar!) - as it turns out I didn't need to - over 3 hours before high tide and there was plenty of water on my mooring - bonus!

GoogleEarth view..

Scores on the doors....

Distance: 28.73 miles (cumulative total in the 2012 mileage tab at the top of the page)
Wind: Force 2 in the morning, force 3 in the afternoon - some gusts but perfect. Went from WSW to SW as day proceeded...
Sail Plan: Full main, full jib..
Speed: GPS says max speed was 6.6knots (!) guessing that would have been under motor on the way out of the harbour at the start of the day, with an average speed of 3.1 knots (not bad...  that would be my passage planning assumed speed for a "Fantasie 19")....