June 28

June 28, 2011: Plymouth – Weymouth.

A very early start of the day: We got up at 04:45 and after a nice shower in the luxurious facilities of the Sutton Marina, we left Plymouth at 05:15 CET.
This was the beginning of our return journey home.
We had reached the most Westerly point of our five weeks sailing enterprise.
The town of Plymouth was a bit of a disappointment from a touristic point of view.
There is a very small old part of the town and a very large shopping centre.
The food however was very good. We tried one of the Indian take-aways and it was very delicious and hot.

Anyway, as we were a very early morning starter, passing the lock wasn't any problem. We asked the lock-keeper to be prepared for us and indeed as we approached the lock, it was already open and the pedestrian bridge was being opened as we entered the lock.
We set our sails in the wide port entrance and took off in a South-West direction.
The whole day we had a stern wind. In the beginning of the day very strong, but later in the afternoon it became more moderate so we decided to test our Spinnaker skills.
After a long day of sailing we reached Portland peninsula at 21:30 CET.
Then it is still 7 miles to Weymouth harbour.
The sun gave us a nice show when going underand We took some nice pictures.
At 23:00 we were in Weymouth harbour, which is a nice old town with little berths possibilities. We rafted up with two other yachts, but the skipper of the outside yacht told us that he planned to leave at 06:00 in the morning, so, rafting up with him was a bad idea, he said.
Having only one other option left, we decided to raft up with him anyhow and we promised him to be up at 06:00 UK time to let him out.

June 29, Weymouth - Yarmouth (Isle of Wight)

The fast ferry boat between Weymouth and Guernsey lay close to us and made quite some noise the whole night. Nevertheless we slept well till 05:45 UK time.
Monique and I were out on sitting on our deck at 06:00 AM but there was no activity to be seen on the neighbouring yacht. We waited for 15 minutes and I decided then to take my camera and shoot some nice pictures of the awakening town of Weymouth instead.

Our neighbour eventually got up at eleven o'clock. He apologised for not mentioning to us that he would not leave in the morning. Oscar, Monique and I ate a large breakfast and they took off exploring the city and doing some grocery shopping and Sam and I went to the ship chandler.
Around noon we left for the Isle of Wight.



will keep you updated.
Cees, Sam, Monique and Oscar.