Somebody once said that the best person to share a boat with is a parson (though nobody has yet offered to share one with me!). Certainly, I value the flexibility which occasionally allows me to plan a mid-week cruise, especially as I know another vicar who is as keen on sailing as I am: he was duly invited to join me.

The Solent is the nearest and best cruising area for us in southwest London, so we duly motored off towards Warsash, with his Mirror inverted over my Heron-and-trailer, to launch on the last of the ebb. Incidentally, I have gained a lot of peace of mind about the security of my trailer by parking it tight up to a kerb, tree, wall or shrubbery, and then reversing the car over the draw-bar (mind the bow-chock with a low-slung car!). In warm sunshine and with a northerly force 2 dead astern, we made for Cowes and the Medina.

Having heard of people sailing without rudders, I faint-heartedly compromised (in those busy waters) by lashing my tiller, and was pleasantly surprised to find I had quite a lot of control over my direction by adjusting the amount of heel to windward or leeward. In fact, I made it to our first stop at the Folly Inn without use of the rudder, including one deviation to avoid a merchant ship and another to close Denis in the Mirror, involving a tack and a gybe, plus the use of my 100 square foot spinnaker during the last couple of miles. I could have done with this ability in Swansea Bay two years ago when my rigged but rudderless boat blew off the beach: a friend rowed me out to recapture it, but had to tow it back because I couldn’t manage without the rudder.

Our evening plan was to take the bottom at high water (about nine o’clock), camping if a site was available (one wasn’t) or sleeping aboard the Heron under a camping cover. Incidentally, with limited headroom under the camping cover, I find I can get comfort and shelter at anchor by hoisting just the front section of the cover, from the mast to the shrouds; the Mirror achieved the same result by ‘setting’ the jib: head to halliard, tack and clew to chainplates.

The second day dawned bright and clear. We reached down the Medina to Cowes, emerging to find a WNW force 3 and a fair tide. From there to our goal at Yarmouth we made long and short tacks covering about nine miles in an hour and three quarters; in fact we got to Yarmouth too soon — it was impossible to penetrate the ebb — so we beached and lunched on the shore to the west. The shipping forecast was for increasing wind (each forecast we listened to threatened one more on the Beaufort scale) so we agreed to abandon our plan to spend the night at Yarmouth and return the next day; instead we pushed straight off and returned immediately, for fear of being storm-bound on the island, and were rewarded with a very safe but exhilarating broad reach in which we covered the seven miles to East Lepe buoy in just one hour (the tide having turned in our favour again while we ate). My boat has NEVER planed, and never will as I bolt on or glue in some cruising item from time to time; but I suppose we must have been surfing quite a lot of the way, for the Admiralty tide atlas showed only 1½ knots average help.

As we rounded Calshot Spit we came hard on the wind up Southampton Water and then bore away up the Hamble, to take an evening mud berth on what we discovered was a small island, on the west bank just short of Swanick Marina.

Somebody had been looking after us, for the third morning dawned and produced warm sunshine and a westerly f2 to 3. This was to be our final day, so we set off on the ebb with no great aims: just to potter in the Solent. We planned first to look at Titchfield Haven, which seems so attractive in Adlard Coles’ Creeks and Harbours of the Solent, but I regret that we failed to find it; it looked as though somebody with a bulldozer had filled it in and built over it! (Two months later we found it, further south than we had looked!).

Our disappointment was alleviated by the sight of a halo round the midday sun, which Denis said was normally only seen in polar regions, being composed of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. All this warmth made us lethargic, so we decided to eat on the beach west of Calshot; getting there was easier said than done, close-hauled on a foul tide. We made a foolish mistake here, beaching too early on the falling tide. To avoid wasting too many hours, we had to empty the boats and haul them laboriously towards the low water mark. That will teach us for next time!

We floated off on the afternoon flood and returned up Southampton Water, finally slipping the boats at Warsash, and cooking and eating our evening meal on the public benches near the yacht club. Well filled, and well satisfied with three near-perfect days of cruising, we loaded all the gear and drove home in the dusk.