Arne Picnic

I had a visit from my brother and his fiancé on Saturday.. the trick was how do I fit in sailing with family commitments... I know, convince them it will be fun to join me onboard :)

Julie and Sue packed a picnic and drove round to Wareham while Kev, James and myself headed for the boat with a plan to sail to Arne.

Once aboard, we didn't loiter.  We set off with just a reefed main until I was sure Kev was happy with being onboard.   I then unfurled a bit of genoa and we plodded off across the harbour.  Making our way towards Arne was actually quite hard,  We were beating into the wind and against the tide and all the time I was trying to keep the boat comfortable.  That went out of the window the first time Kev got a salty ear douche :)
It took us about an hour and a half to get to Arne, which wasn't bad really.  First thing, when anchored,was to get the kettle on and have a coffee.   Before climbing into the tender, to meet up with the girlies for our picnic, we had to check and check again that the anchor had held.  In the end it turned out that another yacht had been dragging and then sudden let go a was drifting down the channel. Frantic activity onboard as the engine sparked up and they motored back up channel.

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The picnic was spot on, a bit like an Italian style ploughmans lunch all washed down some English style beer.  While sitting on the beach, surrounded by marooned jelly fish, we saw a deer trot down to the water and without breaking step went straight in and swam off.  We're not sure where he went as he eventually disappeared from view.

When it was time to go we found the down side to Arne.  At low tide the beach soon stops being sandy and becomes really muddy... up to your knees, black as ink mud.. yuk.

It was close to low tide and even with Ciao Bellas shallow draft we hit the bottom a couple of times. Eventually through a slight navigational error (I turned too soon)  we went aground and after a minute trying to get off, we settled down for refreshments as we waited for the tide.

Kev took the helm and steered us back to the mooring. He seemed to enjoy being on the boat but turned down the once in a lifetime opportunity to crew on a cross channel trip next week... I don't know why :)
Any way, here's our little scrawl to Arne,  you can see by the angles that it was a hard beat against the tide and my navigational error coming out of the witch channel (just after the 10 mile mark) stands out like a sore thumb.