Sailing through the 'Needles.

The start of this video finds us in Lyme Regis, a small harbour on the south coast of the UK. We'd been sailing east from Falmouth with the goal of seeing my parents here, and having done that, as the wind was still blowing from the west, we decided to continue sailing east rather than turning around and having to beat up wind to get back. We sailed around Portland Bill and spent a quiet night in Weymouth before an early morning departure that would allow us to sail all the way to the Solent, arriving with the tide before the end of the day and before some strong weather was due. Here we're approaching the Needles which is one of the entrances to the Solent and consists of quite a narrow channel between two areas of shallow water. The Needles themselves are actually the rock formations that we'll see in a moment but this nearby piece of water is quite notorious in its own right because there are very strong tidal currents through here and especially when the wind is going the other direction you can get strong overfalls and violent dangerous seas. We were arriving with a flooding tide, which means it would be going the same direction as the wind, and therefore less dangerous. But even so, in these conditions, the seas were quite confused and choppy, and it was quite exciting sailing through what we knew was a very narrow gap, even though we couldn't see the areas of shallow water to either side. Okay, so we're now in the Solent. We sailed here from Lyme Regis, had a really good sail around Portland Bill, first of all, which is a really notorious headland with a very strong tidal race off it. We spent a night in Weymouth then, and then another day sail from there around the next headland and then in through the Needles. The Needles are the entrance into the Solent. The Solent is the body of water just to the north of the Isle of Wight, between Isle of Wight and the UK mainland. And the Solent is a very famous area for sailing, it's one of the most historically important places for sailing in the world I'd say, certainly in the UK, Okay. and there's many towns and cities around here with a very very strong sailing culture. Now we're here for a few reasons. We were hoping to attend the Southampton boat show but unfortunately we left it a bit late and they didn't have space for us but that's okay, we did need a bit of a rest so we had a couple of nights on anchor. And now we're going to see an old friend of this channel and a very old friend of the boat, a man who probably has the oldest living memory of this boat I'd say. He is 90 years old now and he remembers the boat from when he was a child so that probably would have been I guess in the 1940s or maybe the 1930s even his grandfather was the skipper of Tally Ho for the famous 1927 Fastnet race and this gentleman Roy remembers being on the boat when he was a child and I did interview him in one of my early videos I'll add the link to that in the video description here and I asked him about his memories of the boat and so on. He's very excited about the project and he's been looking forward to seeing the boat again. So we're going to go and meet Roy and just have a chat. So we'll be tying up to the dock in Warsash shortly to do that. And talking of the Fastnet, I just realized that we're about to pass Jolly Breeze, which is a contemporary of Tally Ho. She was the boat that won the very first ever Fastnet race. And she's a magnificent gaff cutter, similar rig to Tally Ho, a little bit bigger, very cool boat, and so we're gonna pass her and hopefully give them a wave. I think, you see the black and white stripy cylinder tower? I think close to that. Right, so you see that dark blue hull directly ahead? Yeah. Just the port of the bowsprit? Yeah. We're going in there. Looks like they're just, they've just left, which is perfect. So we're going to turn around, turn around that green can. So go around the can? Yeah, and then come in port side two. Okay. You will need to go astern in a sec, so just let it slow down. Okay, go astern. Do I need this over here? Yeah. More revs. More revs. Okay. Alright, go forward. Keep the helm hard over. More revs. Okay. Very nice. Fender's touching. Good job. Thank you. I had some help. Hi, John. Well done. Nice to meet you. And you. You didn't even need your bow thruster. I'm Thank you. Just a loop onto that cleat, please. Perfect. starting to speak So we did see Roy, he came down to the boat in Warsash, had a good look at it, we had a good chat. He's a lovely lovely guy, he's 90 years old now now. and like I said he was on Tally-O as a young boy when his grandfather was a skipper. Unfortunately and unbelievably there was a problem with the footage from that day and I can't actually... use it at all. So it's a big shame but we salvaged a few photos and who knows, maybe we'll be able to go back and see Roy again next year. But if not, the main thing for me was just that he got to see the boat and we got to meet up. That was really important to me and I think it meant a lot to him as well so that was fantastic. All right well really amazing to see Rory after all these years. Now we're heading further up the Hamble River. It's amazing just the amount of sailboats on this river. I mean like I said it's one of the... Sort of international capitals of sailing I'd say and there's just thousands and thousands of boats moored on this river It just keeps on going more and more marinas pontoons moorings and so on But we're heading up under electric power to the Elephant Boatyard Which is a really cool boatyard that does a lot of work with wooden boats classics So we're gonna go see what they're up to and say hi and maybe stay for a couple of nights. Yes What's the plan? I'm Beth and I am the granddaughter of Mike Richardson who bought the land we're on now back in 1951 and then from 1952 there was a sailing school here and they then started I'm going to get started. the boat building side of things. My father then took the yard on and now it's my brother and myself running the yard so we're third generation in. Thank you for coming. And it's a very different place to what it was back then, but we're still going strong. And I'm Luke. I'm the foreman here at the Elephant. I'm now running into my 20th year here at the yard. I came here straight from school when I was 16. And I've seen a massive change in the yard over the times that we've been here as well. We've really developed and I haven't brought up the times, but keeping that traditional feel. So after visiting the Elephant Boatyard our next stop was the Beaulieu River which is also accessed from the Solent and is a very special river that winds its way into the New Forest and on our way up the river we stopped for a little while at a very small, very special gathering of some lovely old wooden boats before continuing up to Buckler's Hard where we'd been invited to spend a few days. Now Bucklers Hard is a historic riverside village which used to be a thriving shipyard where some of Nelson's ships were built and you can still see the big slipways where they were launched. Now unfortunately I didn't actually do very much filming this time at Buckler's Hard for a couple of reasons. One is that I am really hoping to go back there and spend longer and learn more about the history and tell more stories and meet more interesting people. Some of the people there are doing really great work with archaeology and with some new wooden boat related projects. The other reason I didn't do much filming is that I was actually a bit unwell around this time and in fact I left the boat in Bucklers Hard for a while and went back up to Bristol where I sort of rested and recuperated in a house which was a nice novelty for me. And after that when I was feeling a bit better I did come back to the boat and actually hosted quite a short notice sort of open house meet and greet which was a lovely afternoon. I think it was a good thing in the end that it was quite short notice because a lot of people came and if there had been any more it might have been quite overwhelming but as it was it was really lovely to spend a couple of hours talking to people showing them the boat and so on. So thanks to everyone who who came down to See the boat that day. Now by this point Marit had left the boat to do an artist residency in the Azores but I got my brother to come down to crew for me for a couple of days which was really great and we left the Solent heading back towards Cornwall. Now the prevailing winds in the English Channel are from the west and they can be quite relentless especially near the winter months but For this couple of days there was a forecast of fairly light winds from the north so I wanted to take advantage of that and get all the way back to Cornwall in one go because it's quite rare to have that sort of weather window at this time of year. Not a car carrier if that's the same ship. We had a very good trip, fairly light settled weather, lots of dolphins, some phosphorescence, and it took 26 hours for us to get into Falmouth and we got in just before some pretty strong weather came through, so that was great. So now I'm in Falmouth and it's probably the end of the sailing season for me, so I'm going to be looking for a nice safe place to put the boat for the winter, where I can do a lot of work on the boat. Because there's a lot of preparation needed for the Fastnet race. There's a lot of maintenance that's overdue. A lot of servicing and some pretty big changes to the rig as well. So there's going to be lots of stuff going on which I'm really excited to show you guys. So keep an eye out for that. But until then, thanks a lot for watching. And a massive, massive thank you to everyone who has donated or otherwise supported this project. It does make a huge difference. It means I'm able to sail on. Maintain live on this boat and also means I'm able to make these videos. So I really really appreciate it I'll see you next time. Cheers