TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

Round the Needles light, trying hard to avoid a dangerous wreck just SW of the lighthouse as we are really close in.

Yarmouth lifeboat is hovering near the rocks, are they expecting trouble around this point of the course, or are they just sitting in the prime spectator spot?

This is close quarter manoeuvring with a vengeance. We are catching six boats ahead of us but unfortunately they are in line abeam and about 2 feet apart. We have another two boats on our port side, with the closest about 6 feet away, and another two just as close to starboard. Where do I go? 

A gap opens in the line ahead of us and we squeeze through.

OK now to reach down to St Catherine’s Point, the most southerly point on the island.

Ahead the sea is covered in sails but look behind and there are hundreds more.

The wind is fluky here, gusts coming down the gullies on the cliffs, the boat rounding up as we spill wind from the main….

We see boats behind us that passed us before so perhaps our inshore route around the needles did gain us some ground.

A close reach towards the point but aiming a little high just in case the wind shifts as we get closer to the point… The old girl is flying along!