This recent spell of lovely weather couldn’t pass by unnoticed from a sailing point of view. A visit to Lyme Regis would be a good idea, not too far away and would give us a chance of a decent trip half way across Lyme Bay.
The plan was to stay at Lyme on the Friday and Saturday night and West Bay Sunday night with an early start on Monday to take the inshore passage at Portland Bill. Beforehand I made inquiries with both Lyme Regis and West Bay harbourmasters to establish if there was any swell and apparently, at the time, there was not with the very light winds. The webcam at Lyme Regis Marine Theatre is very useful and sure enough, the picture looked quite placid the day before we set off.
Two of us, Summer Wine (Dick Rutherford - single-handed) and Adelaide (Jim Long and Steve Wash) departed Weymouth Town Bridge on Friday 30 September at 1000. We met up with Honey (Howard Cogan and Jeremy Legh-Smith) at the Chequered Fort and made our way towards the inside passage of Portland Bill, rounding it at the prescribed time of 1230. Stella (Paul and Margaret Roberts) were to join us later in the afternoon. There were strange rolling waves at the Bill that I’ve never seen before, and very little wind.
When we arrived at Lyme Regis it was a bit loppy, much the same as it always is. Lyn had arrived by bus and met us on the floating pontoon. Before it got dark, we dinghied to the pontoon for some shore side activity where the pontoon was a bit lively. After eating and drinking at the Standard Inn we came back into the darkness where by now, the pontoon was very lively with waves whooshing up in the air; you almost had to crawl on the pontoon to avoid being knocked over with the very real possibility of ending up in the water. The issue of health here was quite relevant. After a very hazardous trip back to our boats we tried to settle down for the night.
As the tide went down the swell got progressively worse and twice there was a shhhhhhh sound and then a mighty bang on the side of the boat as waves hit us threatening to turn the boat over. I thought for a moment we had broken loose from our mooring buoy and were being stranded on the beach but a peep out of the forward hatch told me we were still in place. Dick in Summer Wine was twice thrown out of his bunk: that’s no way to treat one of our venerable members.
During the night we each thought we couldn’t risk spending another night here so at daybreak we agreed to get going back for home. I was feeling a bit peeved after the reassuring advice I was given previously. We set off at 0830 on the Saturday. Paul took Lyn to the pontoon for her bus ride back home. The tide was with us all the way and we had to get going at a decent clip to get to Portland at 1300 but it would have been too risky trying for the inshore passage so we went the long way round that always seems to take ages.
With the last of the flood tide there was a lot of southerly tidal flow on the east side of Portland and fighting that slowed the boats down to a couple of knots making progress very tiresome to say the least after the brisk motorsail across Lyme Bay. I think in the future I’ll go right around the Shambles to avoid the strong contrary tides. It wasn’t quite the weekend we wanted but at least it wasn’t raining! Jim Long 2.10.2011
