Bosham bosanova...

...dreadful alliteration is a hallmark of this blog so you shouldn't be surprised by the depths plumbed for this title... 

...summer has finally arrived in my particular part of the UK, so an afternoon off for some sailing was the order of the day, and Monday was perfect, as with a 15:10 high (spring) tide I reckoned I had over 6 hours to play with...

..left work just after 12, and by 1300 I had already dropped the mooring and was motoring for the end of the Thorney channel..  forecast was a sea breeze of about force 3, and I have to say it delivered in spades..

Beautiful day, but not the most helpful wind direction as it was almost exactly south, with the tide being a big spring the tide was flowing fast this early in the day, so rather than spend the next hour beating across the channel in the same spot(!) I decided to motor down; the wind direction was such that I could bear away for the Chichester channel and Itchenor just after I'd passed "Marker"... bit of motor sailing got me down there quite quickly, but it was still a relief to turn the donk off...

 Fantastic sail..  shorts and t-shirt weather, force 3, flat water - good speeds as the tide was now with me once I got into the Itchenor channel....  superb day, but so busy, every sailing club and activity centre down there seemed to have a small fleet of dinghy's loaded up with kids all having the time of their lives...

Itchenor - boats coming at you from all directions, and no channel I could see, just moorings and dinghy fleets all over the show...!

Wind was fluky as I approached Itchenor, there are tree's along the southern bank that break up the breeze..  I pushed on as far as I could but sheer numbers of boats meant that in the end I decided to take a detour and head up the Bosham channel past Cobnor Activity Centre

I was glad I did because I met up with this chap...

"Faith" is a Paradox Sailboat... lots more detail here and also here but by the strangest coincidence the owner of that blog is one of my followers (!) so...  if that was you Bill, it was nice to meet you and say hello... let me know if you found that nice quiet mooring for the night you were looking for..

Stunning boat that has done some serious journey'ing...

...and so with a quick check of Bosham itself, it was time to run for home...

Lovely sail back, but that tide was an absolute killer...  fine beat back to the main channel, but the run up the harbour was interminable whilst being brilliant all at the same time! In the end with time running out the donk went back on and I ran for home at...... just 2.5 knots at full whack - huge tide, I reckon at least 1.5 to 2 knots against... I didn't have much fuel with me(* so much for lessons learned!) so the concern was I wouldn't be able to use the rev's to get back in time, or I'd run out of fuel before I got there, but happily all ended OK....  phewww.... 

Track for the day...

So how does all that pan out??

Distance: 16.08 miles (cumulative total in the 2012 mileage tab at the top of the page)
Wind: Force 3 dropping to a 2  later .. south, must have been a little westerly in it as well...
Sail Plan: Full main, full jib..
Speed: GPS says max speed was 5 knots which I think was under sail as I beat back to the main channel, average speed of 2.7 knots...