Boating Trip #2

After Friday night's snarl up in traffic my day-trip around Poole harbour more than made up for the inconvenience... on a bright sunny morning we headed to the marina and boarded Dad's boat - a Jeanneau Merry Fisher 365. He bought it after selling his Jeanneau Sundance 36 about a year ago and hasn't had a proper go out in it yet, this was where I came in insisting that he and I take it out in the summer for a good going over!

As the boat is moored in Holes Bay we had to go under two bridges in order to get out into Poole Bay itself... one of them is newly built and an impressive bit of engineering:

The bridge is split diagonally and as they come down they fit together... clever!

We also went past the Sunseeker factory:

Some lucky rich git's bought one of those...

Once through the bridges and past Poole Quay our plan was to head around Brownsea Island using a channel that we haven't used in a long time, so long in fact, that Dad and his mate Roy (who came along for the trip) couldn't remember the channel marker positions, and they are both veterans of sailing around Poole harbour! Said channel took us onto the 'Wash Channel' which leads out past the Chain Ferry and into Bournemouth Bay, Dad opened her up and we headed out about halfway then turned around and made our way back into the harbour and headed for the channel to took us to Wareham.

Wareham is a quaint little village that sits on the River Frome, getting to it is via a circuitous up-river route that few deep draft boats can do. Fortunately our boat only draws roughly a foot and good thing too because we went aground slightly as we approached Wareham quayside and that was with a fairly normal Neaps low tide! Anyway we made to the quayside, tied-up and did what pretty much every boat-owning person does at the end of  trip - we went to the pub!

I love pubs by rivers ;)

After several pints we thought we'd best head back so off we went...

Once we were off the River Frome and out into the harbour we tried out the Merry Fisher's engine in an area that allows speeding (most of the harbour has a 6 knot speed restriction). The best we got was 14.1 knots but Dad reckons it'll be a bit faster once the hull has been cleaned and new anti-foul added.

By late afternoon we made it back under the bridges and into the marina... then we headed off for some much needed beer and meal... all in all a darned good day of boating and I even managed to avoid bad sunburn!