Our transport ship AAL Melbourne sailed back to the UK in great weather pretty much in a straight line, arriving in Southampton in 12 days. We were tracking it all the way with winds of less than 15kts most of the journey and calm seas…. until the last 24 hours as she reached the English Channel. With winds around 30 kts+ the shipping company decided to delay offload by 24 hours when conditions were due to be more favourable. We could see from images and video sent by the skipper in Antigua that the ship was big but when we arrived in the port alongside, damn she was big!!
With personal protective equipment along with hard hats, we boarded to find Silhouette.
2 years ago we left the UK with Allegrini, 2 years later and our yachts were next to each other on the Melbourne. Inseparable at the start and end of this part of our adventures!
Steve & Helen set their cameras up on Allegrini which shows us being moved around the ship and then theirs all the way in to the water… that’s UK water you understand, green and cold 😦
Here’s the link from their website http://www.allegrini.co.uk
Safely in the water we spent the night in Southampton town quay marina and enjoyed a safe socially distanced drink or 3 on the pontoon along with 3 other yacht owners!
Having put the sails back on and bimini plus ensuring Silhouette was good to sail, we said goodbye again to Steve & Helen who were heading off to Plymouth making that their base in the UK & headed off to Poole and Cobbs Quay marina which ironically was where we left from in 2018. We had to motor out to the Needles then had a glorious sail to Poole harbour, we couldn’t have asked for better conditions… well perhaps the air temperature could’ve been 15 degrees higher!
We’ve sailed approximately 8,000 miles in 2 years. We are now on pause but will head off to explore the coasts of France, Spain & Portugal again when the World calms down. Then new adventures into the Mediterranean which we are excited about.
Stay safe everyone 🙂
yachtsilhouette.com 