Newtown River... Again!

As you can see from the photograph above, this weekend saw us lazing around in Newtown River again.  Not exactly what we would have expected to do but with a good westerly wind, by the time we had tacked backwards and forwards and were abeam Newtown River, it seemed an appropriate time to stop.  It turned out to be a very peaceful and relaxing stop... perfect for a lazy weekend afloat.

Newtown was surprisingly quiet for the summer; I guess it's that rainy weather effect again!  Just one minor drama and that was a small yacht (nearest one in the photograph above) which dragged its anchor and drifted past us.  We rapidly inflated the dinghy and rowed out (outboard motor taken home last week) to catch the yacht and haul her back before she ran aground.  It was high water.  Once safely attached to BV we hauled up their anchor chain and, with the help of the Harbour Master's launch, moved her onto a mooring buoy.  It was clear why she had drifted; there was only about 4 metres of anchor chain and rope deployed and the depth was about 4.5 metres at high water.  She should have had about 25 metres of chain and rope out.

Sunday morning was sunny and that brought out the crowds. Lots of boats arrived including a whole collection of small gaff rigged yachts which landed on the beach.  The cooking smells wafting from their BBQs were fantastic as we motored out of the narrow entrance.

Once away we elected to go for a poled out genoa rather than hoisting out spinnaker.  We have a self imposed limit of 15 knots true wind above which we do not hoist our spinnaker.  BV can take it easily but it is a powerful sail and we have found that if the wind gets up much above 15 knots it is hard to lower the sail with just one person on the foredeck; at those winds it tends to lift me off the ground as I try to haul it down.  With the poled out genoa though we still made good progress with > 8 knots through the water; its just not quite as colourful.



Clearly there were no such limits imposed on Savannah who sailed past us looking splendid with an enormous red asymmetric flying.  We also saw the new Dutch J Class Rainbow beating up the Solent but sadly too far away to take a decent photograph of her.  We suspect that she was getting some training in before the start of the J Class Solent Regatta 18-21 July 2012.