15th August – Back to Blighty – Cherbourg to Portsmouth

Very early start to make the journey in daylight, and more importantly arrive in daylight.  Up at 05:15 for 06:00 start (French Time).  Seven rounds of sandwiches should see us through.

The 77 mile trip from Cherbourg to Portsmouth takes about 14 hours, therefore there are two plus tide changes.  As you are travelling across the tide the course over the ground makes an ‘S’ shape on the plotter as the tide takes you one way and then the other.

We had wind over tide for the first 5 hours and the ride was seriously unpleasant.  The second third of the journey was slightly better and the last third was quite calm.  Better than the 21 hour journey we made in June.  The weather was also quite kind to us.  We took down the French courtesy flag with a bit of a sniff and more bad French singing.

The route took us passed the Isle of Wight, which seems to take forever to get to and then even longer to pass.  The course into Portsmouth goes through the Solent and on a Friday night it is very busy with Cruise ships (we passed 5) and tanker traffic.  There are also the Forts to navigate around and lots of pleasure craft too.

Spinnaker Tower, Portsmouth, across the river from Gosport.

We arrived at Haslar Marina, Gosport at 20:15.  The bright green ‘Light Ship’ which is now a pub, restaurant and facilities is a welcome site.  It’s a bit hard to see on the picture below.

Info : £28 per night, good, clean facilities, but I had to use my hairdryer in the Laundry.  Very convenient for local town and shops.  The tide runs through the marina and there are many passing ferries which means the visitors pontoon is a ‘rock n roll’ experience.  But there is lots to see in the way of passing boats and ships.

16th August – Saturday

The long day yesterday had taken it’s toll on me and I was in need of a good rest.  Mick bought a new rope for the furling genoa (front sail) and a new map of the Solent.  Mick also changed the engine gearbox oil.

We went for a walk in Gosport, found Morrison’s, and enjoyed the market on the main street and a good bad of chips.

17th August – Sunday

Sunday Papers and then out.  We have bought an ‘All Attractions’ ticket on-line (£21 instead of £28 which the marina office kindly printed out) to visit the Portsmouth Historic Dockyards and other local venues.  Today we visited the ‘Royal Navy Submarine museum’ in Gosport, only a short walk away from the marina.  The highlight is a WW2 submarine called HMS Alliance which has been recently renovated.

Original crew members are volunteers and are fascinating to talk to.  Realistic sounds have also been added to demonstrate what life was like with 65 crew on board.

The first British submarine is also on display.  We would have been much less keen to serve on this one.

One its own this is not a cheap day out, but as part of the package it was very interesting and took 3 hours to complete.