We had a decent lie in this morning and Helen suggested we go for a run along Poole Harbour. We ran for about 5km along the shoreline towards Sandbanks. When we got back the boys had already showered and we breakfasted. Too much to ask for them to have it ready I suppose.

I also wanted to check the log impeller since we’d been reading zero and I expected it to be clogged with weed. Not the case, it had been left out completely with just the blanking plate in place.

The plan back to the Solent was to hit the tidal change at the Needles at around 1630. This meant leaving the quay by around 1pm assuming we could manage 5kts.

This turned out not be possible under sail alone. We managed about 2.5kts and gave it a good go before reverting to the iron sail. Wind was only about 8kts but from the NW which at least meant a steady beam reach.

Three hours on a single tack can get a bit boring so on came the autopilot. Using the chart plotter we could see the tide was forcing us to crab slightly reflected in a difference between heading and course.

I also wanted the family to sail closer past the Needles and see it for themselves so I set the Bridge cardinal as the waypoint. The tide worked against us a little until we got into the Solent and then gave us about 2.5kts assistance.

Since we made good time for Cowes (and not our back up of Yarmouth) we stopped at Cowes YH for milk and bread. It was much easier mooring using a mid ships spring and we used this again at the Folly Inn.

Miles logged 30.