Chichester

Was our next stop. We knew we would have to fight the tide along the way, but this was necessary as we wanted to arrive at the top half of the tide and, with the tidal stream atlas giving a maximum tide of 1.9 knots against us (then less than one knot) we figured it wouldn't be a problem. However, at one stage we were doing 6 knots thru the water and only 3 over the ground so something didn't quite add up. Anyways, it wasn't really a problem but it meant that we had to motor-sail for a while which was a shame as the wind was quite nice.

Pilotage at the entrance looked to be quite tricky from the pilot book and, indeed, the entrance markers were difficult to spot but thereafter it was well-marked and fairly straightforward to find our chosen anchorage in the lee of Pilsey Island. And what an anchorage!

As the tide drained away we became more and more sheltered from the wind as Vega1494 sank (bad choice of word!) lower behind the island. We cracked open a beer, read, watched the commings and goings, Susi was spying on some bloke with the binoculars, cracked open more beers, I swam to shore with a camera in a dry-bag to take a snap, watched the sun go down, chatted, read etc. etc. Absolutely brilliant!

The skipper slept well untill about 0200 and then was worried that the anchor was dragging. He stayed up for an hour, let out a little more line and went back to bed. We had dragged, but only a little. We awoke to another sunny day and the sight of the hottish chick next to us going for a morning swim. Nice!