Elsa sails to Littlehampton

18 May 2013

Perfect day today, finally, wind and tide and weather all ok and good for my voyage. None of the blokes from Arun ever seem to be available so I did it on my own!

Left Portsmouth about 1000 this morning, past the abandoned old destroyers that litter the place awaiting scrapping


Exiting through the Small Boat Channel and then once clear of the ferries and hovercraft turning to the East. Once clear of all traffic I hoisted sail and shut the engine up. Self portrait from my phone:

Obviously I’d made a passage plan, notified the coastguard, used GPS waypoints and kept a log going:

After a long but uneventful sail via the Looe Channel around Selsey Bill I arrived outside Littlehampton entrance. This was the trickiest bit – it’s actually quite hard to find from the sea, even with my GPS waypoint, so I ended up trolling along the coast from Bognor for ages until I found it. Then outside in the open (but quite calm) sea I dropped and tied up the sails, started the motor, got my fenders and ropes read and chugged up the Arun to the yacht club pontoons, arriving at 5pm. Nervous about parking into my space for the first time I stopped on one of the ends and tied up, then grabbed a couple of blokes from the bar to help me drive into my space without crashing into anything. So here she is in her new berth:

Tonight when the tide goes out she will settle into the mud and hopefully rise again in the morning... but my car is in Portchester along with Elsa’s tender behind so I have to get the train down in the morning and retrieve all that before I can check on Elsa again. So, tired but very pleased with myself and very happy indeed to have her in her new home and no further monetary demands from the nice people in Portchester which was getting a bit boring!