Thursday 12^th July – B52, Ocean Village Marina to Beaulieu River

50:53.75N  1:23.44W

We still have a lot of jobs to do on Pyxis but feel if we don’t set off, we never will.  So, today’s the day! 

We set off for Beaulieu to say goodbye to Gins and the Beaulieu River, a favourite haunt over the last 4 years. We had a fast sail down Southampton Water and then turned the corner at Calshot to find 20+ knots of wind on the nose and a short, choppy sea – not good.  The choice was to tack down into it or, not being purists, donk into it and get up the Beaulieu River as fast as possible.  So, we donked down to Beaulieu. 

We arrived at Gins at 15.30 approaching low water.  At Gins, the pontoon has a shallow end and a much shallower end with an even shallower area of water to the side of it to avoid, oh, and a small stream flowing into the river at that point causing back eddies to the flow of the current.  With a yacht already on the not so shallow end, and a strong wind blowing us directly off the pontoon, this was not going to be an easy manoeuvre. Unfortunately, I got the shortest straw. 

On the third attempt, with the depth having dipped alarmingly to 2m at one point (Pyxis has a draft of 1.9m!), we had quite a congregation on the pontoon trying to help (and probably enjoying the entertainment). I managed to get the nose onto the pontoon and Richard threw the stern rope to John who tied it off for us.  It was then the classic manoeuvre of sweating the stern in whilst holding the nose in place.  I’m sure this was the sort of weather we were trying to avoid on our travels, ho hum.