Torquay to Weymouth

Sunday 3rd August - The almanac is again very explicit that passing Portland Head at Springs in the wrong place and the wrong tide state will be very bad. With this in mind, I follow the almanac timing exactly to take the early inner flow and avoid the movable tidal race. The was not a long passage, so we could take it easy.
Sailing downwind with little swell was easy but not fast, and the scooper failed to perform again. Rigged with main + gybe preventer, leaving a hard jib effectively to stop rolling. a few miles from Portland Head it started to rain and the visibility dropped, we retreated inside Serenity ( she has an inside wheel as well as an outside tiller ). Taking an inside route around Portland Head gave us excellent views as well as the safety and tide we were hoping for, it great when the nav works as predicted.
We passed Portland Harbour, the Southerly entrance looked tempting but had a chain or something stretched across it. Weymouth indicated that they had plenty of space if we did not mind rafting up - we had arrived on the South Coast. We arrived mid evening and found a nice couple to raft up with. I had been really nervous about rafting up at the beginning of this trip, but the people that you meet can turn this necessary evil into a real pleasure.
As it was a late arrival and an early start, we never actually got off of Serenity which was sad as I found Portland Bill very interesting from the sea and would have liked to have explored it more.