A forerib of beef and a new speed record

On a wet and windy November morning we welcomed Anne MacDougall, Suzy Fox and Anne’s boyfriend Mike Lankin onboard. We have had the pleasure of sailing with Suzy (Foxy) and Anne many times but this was to be Mike’s first time outing. To call it a truly miserable day as far as the weather goes was an understatement. But Mike showed his mettle early on by agreeing this was akin to low tide and things can only go up.

Never mind the positive attitude, we’d heard from Anne Mike was a bit of a cook, and he arrived armed with a forerib of beef! Boom – take that! I’d never heard of a forerib being cooked on a yacht. We were all taking an instant liking to the man.

Everybody got kitted up and we left looking like we were heading off on an ocean crossing.

To be honest I’ve never seen Southampton water choppy and was thinking our planned trip to Yarmouth could be a very lumpy one.  But once in the western Solent it calmed down and we zipped along to Yarmouth in time for a late lunch at Salties. Crafty Salties have now classified there fabulous fish and chips as M and L. Medium and Large? Nope – Mens and Ladies! Now what man in his right mind is going to say “I think I’ll have the ladies fish and chips please” ?!

Mike and Anne and a good piece of forerib for dinner!

An afternoon of milling about and catching up with friends before it was time to get back to the boat to cook that forerib! As always we learnt yacht gas ovens are not in the same league as home ovens and it needed some more time. Did I mention we’ve learnt that? To be fair we have learnt that, but not necessarily learnt to implement it. But Mike and Anne waved some sea magic and a delicious moreish forerib of beef was thoroughly enjoyed. Warm, full and toasty we retired to bed. The wind however was picking up and made for a particularly noisy night. My mind was running away as I kept thinking the mast might blow over!

Come Sunday morning I felt obliged to show Mike the famous Needles landmark of the Isle of Wight. To get there meant sailing close-hauled and with some good wind against tide. 20 minutes later and some cracking bouncy seas, the ladies suggested downwind sailing is a lot more pleasurable and so around I turned to rather surf down waves with the wind behind us. As the wind picked up and sailing under jib only we were soon flying and Adina was hitting over 8kts. Foxy took over the helm and as we approached Calshot, an area of regular wind acceleration, Adina was moving even faster passing 9kts. This was going to be a day for speed records and Foxy duly obliged hitting 9.7kts and destroying the previous guest record of 7.2kts – and a mere 0.2kts from the all time record!! That’ll be the Mans portion of fast sailing a blue water cruiser please (although the author acknowledges the record is held by a lady!).

Sadly the days are now short and we were in by 3pm.

So how did Mike do? Not a flicker of discomfort, quite content. Things can only get better as the tide comes up. Fabulous to see good friends again.