Cathy's Blog: Delivery

The hottest weekend of the year - and we couldn't go sailing, because the boat was ashore for a last minute clean-up before we set off to do the Fastnet. Once again the hard racing antifoul was disappointingly grubby (despite the best efforts of the skipper with the Hullmaid, before the last couple of races. He'd even donned wetsuit and dived down to sponge the rudder.)

However, the smooth, racing finish we'd put so much effort into in the winter was still impressive, and once the hull was pressure washed, required little attention. But the propeller needed a polish (there were actually some barnacles to remove) and the gasket round the sail drive leg was starting to come adrift. It was good to have the boat out in the sunshine for 24 hours to get a really good cure on the Sikaflex this time. It should stick better than it did in March, but two thin strips of fibre glass were added down the sides, to screw it on just to make sure.

Then on Monday morning, the boat was back in the water by the time we arrived at the harbour at 8.30am, and having stowed the fresh food (everything else was already on board) we were on our way by nine.

After all the south westerly sevens so far this season, we'd been almost dreading the delivery trip to the South Coast. In the event, the first leg, from Levington to Dover, was blessed with a nice moderate westerly: an excellent sail in the sunshine. Once we reached South Foreland we had a reminder of those strong south westerlies, but by then we were nearly there. It didn't matter.

The next day the wind stayed in the south west, but there wasn't enough of it to sail fast enough for efficient passage making, and we motored from Dover to Brighton in sparkling sunshine. How lovely and blue the south coast sea is compared with the coffee-coloured murk we are used to in the Thames Estuary. And the scenery is stunning, too. Altogether we felt we were on holiday.

Wednesday's sail from Brighton to Cowes was the best, however, blessed with a northerly breeze that had the boat flying along on a beam reach, through the Looe Channel and into the Solent - where we were faced with the spectacle of a record-breaking Cowes Week: hundreds of boats racing on a numbert of different courses, not to mention a vast flotilla of spectator boats and photographers' dories scudding between them.

We decided the only sensible thing to do was to furl the headsail and start the engine, for maximum manoeuvrability, to stay out of trouble and avoid impeding anyone.

We knew Cowes would be chock a block, with nearly 1,000 boats entered in the regatta, and we had been advised to moor at Folly, at the top of the Medina. The trip up the river was fascinating - we've never gone beyond Cowes Yacht Haven before. And the setting is idyllic, if a little crowded. Better still, we were charged a mere £12.10 for a night's moorings, a refreshing change after £30 at Brighton the night before.

And after three days of relentless progress, it was a relief just to stop. We took the water taxi back down river to Cowes, to the RORC race office, where we picked up our Fastnet essentials: bow stickers, backstay flag, sailing instructions and the tracker that will allow anyone who is interested to follow our progress in the race. (And if our track disappears from the Fastnet mini site, www.fastnet.rorc.org, there's no cause for alarm: it is more likely that the tracker has malfunctioned than that the boat has sunk).

Once we were given that carrier bag full of goodies, all of a sudden the Fastnet became very real. It stopped being something we have been talking about and started to be something that is actually going to happen: very soon. We returned to the boat to read and reread the sailing instructions, and revise our navigation homework.