Tide

Anne and I took the Skerry down to Rye, for the WBA sailing day.  We stayed over in a nice rental, had a really nice day the day before pottering around, swimming and generally lazing about, so we were in good shape to get down to the ramp bright and early Sunday. The wind on the morning was a bit stronger than forecast, a brisk Northerly, and Rye was a lee shore.  The ramp is quite exposed, and was mighty choppy.  None of the WBA gang were keen on risking launching in those conditions.  The Skerry, weighing all of 45 kilos, is a beach launchable proposition.  

We got some WBA volunteers to help us carry the boat to the water's edge, then rowed out through the breaking waves to get some sea room.   Once we had the sails up, with the reef in, we took off and blasted our way along the coast to Sorrento in no time. 

I thought as we were sailing that it was my extraordinary seamanship and boat handling, but in fact it was about 3 knots of tide helping us along.  We landed on a nice sandy beach there.  Peter and Kirsty had driven up to check out the Sorrento ramp, and were on the beach to welcome us, which was very nice of them. 

We had some shore leave and raided the lunch rations and the thermos for a nice picnic in the sun, watching the Sorrento beach walkers, mostly with dogs, parading back and forth. 

When we set out to get home, we discovered that the wind had shifted, so we would be tacking back,  and eased right off.    Now we were heading into it, the affect of the tide also became apparent.  I was lucky to be making 1.5 knots over the ground, and at an angle of about 50 degrees off where I wanted to go.  We could probably have crawled faster than we were actually closing on our starting point. At one point I decided I would row faster, and I dropped the sail.  By the time we were organized, we had gone backwards, to a point we had sailed past a half an hour earlier.  Rowing directly into the current was hard work, and I could barely keep us going at a knot.   Eventually Anne worked out we could "motor sail". she would row with one oar, while I sailed as close to the wind as I could.  

It took us around 4 hours to get back again.  We don't really have to worry about tidal currents down our end of the bay, this was a real learning experience for me.

When we finally got back, Anne went for a swim.  I got persuaded to retrieve the boat from the ramp, which probably was not a great idea, and was the low point of the day, but overall it was a fantastic day on the water.