Dawn over Lyme Bay
Sunday 22nd April
Having studied the charts we decided to continue our voyage and head for our next destination; Portland. This would be our longest passage yet crossing Lyme Bay, rounding the treacherous tides off Portland Bill and finally seeking shelter in Portland harbour. Approximately sixty five nautical miles in all. This would be twice the distance of any of our previous passages and would also take us twenty miles off the coast. During our passage plan discussions we had considered stopping off at a halfway house somewhere in Lyme Bay but the more we looked the more we realised that the best option would be to just go for it and take the rhumb line straight across the bay.
At first light we untied our lines from the dock at Darthaven and made our way out of the river to begin heading east across the bay. The sunrise was particularly beautiful and we had a light southerly breeze to fill the sails although we still had to supplement this natural power source with our engine to make the required speed to complete the passage in daylight hours.
For the first hour conditions were idyllic. The morning sun climbed into the south east sky reflecting its rays off the surface of the sea. Berry Head faded into the distance behind us, the last land we would see until Portland, and we were soon surrounded by three hundred and sixty degrees of open ocean. The visibility was impaired by a hazy mist but this looked as though it would be quickly burned away by the ever strengthening sun. Imperceptibly the haze began to close in on us reducing our visible horizon to just a few hundred yards. The sun struggled to keep up but was soon lost in the murk. Haze turned to mist and mist turned to fog. Within a few minutes we were enshrouded and unable to see more than a few yards in any direction. A very eerie predicament but we kept calm and monitored our radar and AIS to check for other vessels in the vicinity.
Spooky cloud formation approaching Portland
Despite a few feeble glimpses through the fog the sun never really broke through and we endured several hours of low level visibility and light airs. We sang pop songs to keep our spirits up, munched on sausage sandwiches and drank a lot of tea. Hours passed with no sign of the fog lifting but finally our horizons widened as we changed course to head north. We had passed Portland Bill seven miles to the south to be sure of avoiding the turbulent and potentially dangerous tidal race off its headland. By mid afternoon the familiar outline of Portland emerged in the distance. Our passage planning and navigation had brought us safely well to the east and we felt elated as we began our approach to Portland harbour.
Fog finally lifting over Portland
By 5 o'clock we were safely along side at Portland marina. We had made it an hour and half ahead of schedule thanks to favourable tidal flows to the south of Portland Bill. The attention to detail we had applied to our passage planning had paid off and we had successfully navigated across Lyme Bay and arrived in a new county; Dorset!Â