The wind was a little too downwind for the big sail, and after three hours or so we took it down, and ran goose winged with the main, and large genoa. By 16-15 we were approaching Selsey Bill, passing inside 'Boulder Street', Chichester Bar was cleared at 18-15. Once inside Chichester Harbour, we picked up a visitor mooring at Itchenor for the night.
Itchenor is where 'NJ' was built by Northshore Yachts in 2006, so she has 'come home'! In the morning we took the dinghy to the pontoon to pay our dues, and visited Northshore to say hello to Bob, the salesman who sold us the boat.
Before lunch, we cast off the mooring and motored up to Chichester Marina for the night.
Chichester Marina is enormous, with up to 1,100 berths, together with impressive facilities, a large boatyard, restaurants, bar, and a good chandler ( very important ). We had an excelllent curry in the 'Spinnaker' restaurant ( English & Indian ) , then back to the boat for a relaxing evening, and recharge our batteries after a couple of long days at sea.
On Saturday we left the marina and motored out to Pilsey Island and anchored in an area much loved by Sue's dad. The dinghy was launched, and we had a short walk on the island to stretch our legs. The sea pink flowers were very spectacular, together with lots of sea kale plants.
Once back on the boat we watched a plethora of day boats and dinghys racing between our position and East Head - very colourful with all the spinnakers and gennekers flying.We shared the anchorage with one other yacht that night, who left early Sunday morning - it was wonderful to have this place to ourselves with so many boats in the area! Back to civilisation on Sunday, and into the same berth in Chichester marina, ready to get some maintenance work carried out on the autopilot on Monday.
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