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Majic-L - Majical Channel ARC - Day 1



My names Mark and I offered to write our blog as I'm the weekend sailor amongst our crew. There are 5 of us doing this great sailing adventure - my crew mates are Richard (the skipper and boat owner), his wife Linda, Tony and Dave. Tony and Dave have both owned yachts themselves and they are all experienced sailors - unlike me but I can type.
We started with an early sailing from Lymington Yacht Haven where Majic-L had been berthed to Gosport for the start of the ARC. Pretty good sail over - took about 4 hours and we managed to find enough wind to sail much of the way. Brilliant sunshine and warm - unbelievable that the weather is forecast so pants for tomorrow!
Tony told me about an app called Find Ship which I told my wife about - next I get an excited text that she could see we had left port and where we were using the app from her desk back in Bristol!
Enjoyed some great views of Isle of Wight as we sailed around Cowes and across towards Southampton water. Things started to get interesting as we passed Portsmouth and prepared to head in towards Gosport - in addition to the normal action to give way or proceed for other small craft that were in the same water, all of a sudden it seemed we had larger ships - Isle of Wight Ferries, cross channel hovercraft (doing 30 knots plus we could see from the AIS) and then a bit scarily the Brittany Ferries ship appeared behind us it seemed out of nowhere - hope that's not a sign of things to come in the Channel?
Once we were in Haslar Marina, we were all impressed with the friendliness and efficiency of the marina staff and we watched them deal competently with fellow ARC yachts as they came in across the afternoon.
Clare and Sally sorted us out with our paperwork for the challenge and the all important flag which we strung up with the bunting RIchard & Linda had brought. We asked about how many of the 29 boats taking part had been across the channel before and were reassured that the majority were channel crossing virgins like ourselves!
So onto the evening drinks and food reception - just like work us all wearing name badges but great for chatting with others. Interesting that a couple of people we chatted too had chartered boats for the trip - they rent boats for a couple of weeks or so a year which for them provided the yachting experience without the cost of running their own.
Of course the elephant in the room is the weather forecast for the weekend which may mean we sail on Sunday - so we wait and see what is decided at the skippers briefing tomorrow but hope the forecast is wrong!
Day 2's instalment tomorrow - hope this wasn't too rambling as I have never blogged before!

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