An Amble to Hamble - with Eagle!

We woke to the sonorous hoot of the Cowes ferry and popping my head through the hatch there it was, looming immensely beyond us in a thick pearly fog. The pontoons were milky with hoar frost and the deck slippery with frozen water so one of the first chilly tasks was to swosh this down with buckets of salt sea water. 

Hot cups of tea and muesli breakfast in the galley set us up and soon there were charts on the table and the trainee Day skippers were busy looking at the Imray chart, tide charts, tide almanac and weather forecasts, noting down our course to the Beaulieu River. This was the first time I had seen the navigation paperwork in action and it was fascinating to see how the information was gathered.

By the time we’d finished preparations the sun had broken through and it was set to be another perfect day. As we motored into the Solent we could see shipping going in both directions, from huge, unstoppable container ships, to tugs, to a few sailing boats like ourselves. In summer, Tom said, it is heaving with pleasure craft, so again, coming in February has bonuses. The trick is not to think in terms of who has right of way but just make sure there are no crashes!

 As we sailed parallel with the land one of the high spots of my holiday flew over. I had so much hoped to see one of the translocated sea eagles that at first I couldn’t believe I was seeing one. It was huge! But even so I kept thinking it must be a buzzard and I could not be so lucky. The project is a partnership between Forestry England (Hurray!) and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation to translocate 60 juveniles to the isle of Wight over a 5 year period from 2019 so what I saw was one of these. Maybe even G463, already a legend, surviving with only one leg and flying 17,000 km.
However, back to the task in hand - the crew’s was to practise lassoing a mooring buoy whilst the Day skippers had to avoid running us aground on any of the many sandbanks that lurk so silently under the water of the Beaulieu River.
After a few misses with both rope (more difficult than you might think) and sand (more of it than you might think) we eventually moored up overlooking the North Solent National Nature reserve and ate lunch listening to the plaintive calls of curlew and strident peeping of oystercatchers.
Heaven!
That night we made landfall at Hamble, Mercury Docks – proverbially the best showers in the area – if you want to drown in hot water.