Channel Havens

After two fun and lazy days in Cowes we were off to our first anchorage. We found a great book of secluded anchorages in Southern England and have been using this as our travel bible for the last few days. It is much easier to trust your anchor hold when an expert says that you are on good ground. And I must say that in addition to the great fun we are having with the Elena and her crew, it feels much more comfortable to lie in a completely secluded anchorage when you know there is another trusted boat bobbing about next to you. We have been moving from amazingly beautiful bay to stunning beach to breathtaking cliff walk and we are all already running out of adequate words to describe what we are seeing (and this only a month into our trip). I personally will be adding two of these places in particular, Worbarrow Bay and Lulworth Cove, to my vocabulary of superlatives. Please review the picture gallery for a more adequate description. Suffice it to say that the South of England is delivering in spades and we have only come as far as Weymouth! In addition to the beautiful surrounding we are having a wonderful time with the Elena crew. Mees and Emma race about on their bikes, with their buckets or in their birthday suits, laughing and splashing and exploring. Pieter and Macsen have spats of interaction and spend the rest of the time smiling at each other or some other diversion, both very cheerful, happy chappies. Last but not least, we really enjoy spending time with Leonie and Adam and all in all it creates a comfortable, relaxed, interesting and exceedingly enjoyable travelling experience.

Oh, oh, oh, and I forgot to add on be of the most exciting little tidbits of news. After several frustrated attempts trawling along the way, Seb and Adam headed out in Spikkel yesterday evening to try some new fishing tackle suggested by an expert in Cowes. This involved some white feathers and hooks tied in a row on a bit of line weighted down with a washer (very high tech) – these are trade secrets so I’m afraid I cannot share any more details. Within a few seconds of their departure, whoops of delight started to echo through the bay. Within the hour, they were back on board, flushed and excited with wild descriptions of the 12 fish they had caught, sometimes 2 on a line!!! The weight of the 12 fish combined would have made an very nice dinner but each was too small to be more than a few bites alone so they were carefully placed back into the sea to grow another year. The search is now on for a new expert who can help them to catch bigger fish. Bigger fish are apparently much cleverer...