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Cowes to Portsmouth, against the tide

#sailing #notes

We slipped the mooring at Cowes just after ten, an hour later than planned. The forecast was a steady Force 4 from the south-west, gusting 5 through the afternoon — lively but not unkind. The tide, on the other hand, was the thing that would quietly run the day. High water Portsmouth was at 13:42; we’d be punching foul tide for most of the crossing.

The passage plan

Nothing exotic. A direct line would have put us on a lee shore entering the harbour, so I’d drawn a two-leg plan: close-hauled on starboard out of Cowes until we were well east of the Shrape, then a broad reach across to the approach to Portsmouth. Reserve plan: tuck into the Solent’s north shore if the gusts built or the sea state in Ryde Middle got ugly.

Short version: plan survived first contact. The crossing didn’t.

What happened

Wind filled in earlier than the forecast suggested. By 10:30 we had a solid F5, gusting 6 out of the Solent’s funnel, and short, stacked waves that the boat was hitting with enough violence to knock a mug clean off the galley rail. I should have reefed at the mooring; I put the first reef in underway, which cost fifteen uncomfortable minutes.

The tide did what tides do. Our SOG through Ryde Middle dropped to 2.8 knots with the boat happily doing 6 through the water. A container ship in the separation scheme passed well clear, but I spent longer than I’d like watching the AIS.

$GPRMC,112413,A,5045.123,N,00108.456,W,2.8,074.2,220326,,,A*6C
$GPRMC,112514,A,5045.150,N,00108.420,W,3.1,073.8,220326,,,A*6D

A textbook reminder that COG and SOG over the ground are the only numbers that matter when the water itself is moving.

What I’d do differently

A few things that I want to write down now, while the passage is fresh:

  • Reef in the pen, not at sea. If the forecast has “gusting 5+” anywhere in the first six hours, the first reef goes in before the bow line comes off.
  • Start earlier. An hour earlier and we’d have had slack water for the crossing. No gear was the problem; timing was.
  • Plan for the exit, not just the transit. The approach to Portsmouth with wind-against-tide is busy and narrow. Next time I’ll have the VHF on the harbour channel from five miles out, not two.

The sea never punishes ambition. It punishes arrival.

We tied up in the marina a bit after three, slightly later than planned, noticeably wiser. Kettle on.

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