May the 1st arrived quite suddenly given all the work we did during April trying to get ourselves organised. It was now time to leave Island Harbour Marina where Britt has spent the winter. Thanks to Tim Bizzey from the Little Ship Club for recommending we look at it when we met in Holland last year. We had a great time there and the marina team and Terry Richardson from Richardsons Yacht Services were very helpful.
We are now working our way West.
First stop was to be Poole to get our sails checked over. We had the wind against us so motored from Cowes across Poole Bay and into Poole Quay Yacht Haven. We had planned to only spend one night there but the winds were too strong to get the sails off so we extended our stay to a second night. Feeling the pain of the extra length of Britt at £75 per night. Once the wind had died down took off the sails and Gavin from Crusader Sails came and picked them up to check them over and put on Chafe Patches as necessary.
Whilst we were waiting for Gavin I had a "quick" trip up the mast. We've had some chafing on the main halyard where it goes back down into the mast to join to the top of the sail (on our in mast furling sytem). I ran the halyard through a slighly different route, which I'm hoping will sort it out. We will need to drop the sail again in a few weeks and see how the chafe is looking. The view from the top is always great.
We then went to anchor South of Brownsea Island by Goathorn Point while we waited for the sails to be ready.