Leaving home(s)

Part 1: Lymington (Charlie)

Leaving home to embark on a long journey is never easy at the best of times, but moving one’s entire life to go and live aboard a relatively small boat is another matter. For days we made trips down to Saecwen’s berth in Lymington ferrying yet another load of stuff on board, with the boat developing a seeming unending capacity to absorb more food, drink and personal gear into her depths. Then finally the day came when it was time to depart. At that point it was really quite easy: we simply locked the front door and left.

With weeks of Easterly winds having dominated Southern England, we picked our departure date to leave our home port of Lymington based on a fair west-bound tide starting at a reasonable hour in the morning. So at 0900 on the 8th of May Saecwen was running out of the Solent before the wind, passing the all too familiar landmarks that had played such an important part of part of my sailing life. First, we shot past Hurst Castle, which had stood guard of the Western approaches of the Solent since Henry VIII’s time. Next, we passed the Needles light house to port – where extraordinarily a grey seal’s head popped up out of the fierce tidal stream as if to say goodbye. I have never seen a seal here before and it felt like a fitting farewell. Who knows when we will these places again?

Saying goodbye to the Needles

The easterlies powered us down channel in time to take the last of the ebb tide round the infamous Portland Bill, before they died later that afternoon leaving Saecwen wallowing in a complete wind hole and a foul tide in Lyme Bay. Before midnight the wind was back into the NE enabling Saecwen to take the next fair tide past Start Point, Pervill Point and Bolt Head. Now in the lee of the land we had a spectacular sail under a bright moon and the cliffs of the south Devon coast. It was also the night of the 80th anniversary of the D Day landings, and along the coast the cliff tops were lit up with celebratory bonfires.

Coming into the Yealm

Finally, as we approached our destination of the River Yealm at 0200, we were perplexed by surrounding frenetic activity involving a helicopter and two high speed boats with flashing blue lights. We later discovered that a somewhat inebriated elderly yachtsman whilst returning to his boat from a D Day party at the Yealm Yacht Club missed stepping into his dingy and fell into the drink, precipitating a full blown search and rescue mission launched from Plymouth. 

Thankfully he was wearing a life jacket and the inshore lifeboat was able to fish him out of the river over a mile and a half upstream where he had been swept by the tide. Somewhat perplexed by all this activity and not wanting to enter the narrow river entrance at low tide in the dark, we dropped Saecwen’s anchor in the lee of the land just outside the river entrance at 0230. After grabbing some sleep, we then entered the Yealm a few hours later to secure to our regular mooring at the mouth of the river.

Saecwen moored off Misery Point at the mouth of the River Yealm