Sunday: the morning was clear, bright and still. The forecast promised wind for the afternoon, but as we drove down the motorway, the cumulus spattered sky suggested a day better suited to soaring than sailing. The inshore forecast of north backing westerly 3 or 4 seemed hard to believe, but as we pulled into the marina car-park a little after 1330, we could feel the beginnings of it on our faces. Without the wind, the day was warm in the sun.
We locked out at 1500 to the sight of a fleet of racing yachts competing for the Shanghai Cup just crossing their start line between the pier-head and Denny, and beating hard up into the tide towards the Newcombe buoy as their windward mark. As we left the shelter of the Hole, the wind beyond the breakwater was already quite fresh and swinging to the west, but still keeping its northerly chill. Out past Denny and clear of the racing fleet, we put Calstar into wind and hauled up the sails, leaving a cautious first reef in the main.
My hope was to push enough up into the tide to round Denny Island. This would be our third attempt at doing so. My original plan had been to beat up the King Road, hoping for less tide closer into shore, but that had been thwarted by the score or so of racing yachts hogging the channel. Instead, we just tried to brute-force it, laying the little yacht as close to the wind and layline as we could on a port tack. With the single reef in the main and an almost full genoa, Calstar was skipping along, at times touching 4.9 knots through the water, but sitting at 20 degrees of heel and leaning significantly beyond as the gusts hit. Dad expressed some concern for his iPad, sat on the chart table below running Navionics.
Despite the pace, it became clear we wouldn't lay Denny on this tack. The island slowly tracked across our bows from right to left as we closed. About half a mile out, we tacked to try and beat up against the tide, but the track on the plotter painted the picture of our futility. Despite it being a neap tide, there was still around 4 knots of adverse set pushing against us. Our starbord tack painted a clear line across the track of our previous port beat. We were holding our ground against the tide, but making no way against it.
Conceding defeat, we tacked back and I eased up my demands on the little yacht and the peril of Dad's iPad by tucking a few extra rolls into the genoa, reducing her heel to a more steady ten to fifteen degrees. We bore away and gybed in the tidal lee of Denny Island, shy of our original objective by no more than a cable or two. Onto a deep reach, the genoa filling just clear of the shadow of the main; in the wake of Denny the sea was swirling and confused as the flood tide rushed around the small island, and Calstar in turn pitched and rolled in the stroppy, irritable waters.
The new Raymarine Tiller Pilot managed the boat admirably, but with the boat so trippy underfoot, we decided not to light the stove for the tea and bacon and egg rolls we'd planned for lunch and instead settled on a cockpit picnic of crackers, humus and green olives. With the cloud-littered azure sky overhead it could almost have felt Mediterranean, were it not for the somewhat marked northerly chill still clinging to the now fully backed, westerly wind,
Closing once again on the Avonmouth shore, we gybed and then hardened up to close hauled, punching back against the tide. The wind built as the tide slackened, and soon enough I'd put another handful of rolls into the genoa and the second reef into the main. We beat back against the still flooding tide towards Portishead. The auto-tack feature on the new Tiller Pilot made tacking an absolute breeze. We watched a large, ungainly car transport lock out of Royal Portbury ahead of us, and then disappear down the King Road and into the evening sun. A bigger yacht in the far distance disappeared into Portishead, and a couple of small powerboats, fishing rods stowed in their transom racks, slapped past us through the now building sea that was turning short and choppy as the tide changed and the wind built.
And then we had the Bristol Channel to ourselves. It was gorgeous sailing, a lowering spring sun casting idle, amber rays out across the lively waters through flattened, early evening clouds, darkened in silhouette. Our little yacht bent to the stiffened breeze, skipping through the chop back to Portishead.
We locked back in a little under four hours after we'd left, the early evening light casting long shadows out across the marina waters, quite sheltered in the lee of the tall buildings surrounding as we nursed Calstar back into her berth and made her fast.
Bridges and islands. That seems to characterise so much of our sailing. We sail under the former and a around the latter. We've sailed beneath both the Severn Crossings and up and back under the Avonmouth motorway bridge. We've sailed out and around Flatholm and Steepholm twice now, and will do so again later this year. It's such a little ambition, of no significance to anyone but me; Denny island is closer to home than all of them, but I've tried to get around it three times now only to be three times frustrated.
It was such a lovely four hours of frustration however.
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