Whether the weather ...

Although we're not counting our chickens, we obviously need to be thinking about plans if all goes well with the survey on the Westerly 33 on Wednesday

April is a month full of time constraints which makes things tricky. I have to be in Northants on Saturday the 16th for my fathers' 80th birthday dinner (the evening of boozing on his actual birthday the previous Wednesday I'll probably have to skip). Then I have to be up Grantham way on Saturday the 30th as we're going to see Bellowhead with Tony and Shelagh (SV Pleinair) and the tickets are bought and paid for!

We have a choice of fitting out suppers on Saturday the 9th - we'd planned to go to the East Coast Forum supper at Fox's Yacht Club in Ipswich but it's also the North Fambridge Yacht Club supper on the same night

Plus I have a week, or most of it, of work planned and booked on a boat at Brightlingsea commencing the 18th and a growing list of other jobs that need to be scheduled asap.

To further complicate matters, advice from the broker who looked over Erbas the other day for us is that we need to get her on the market as soon as possible to take advantage of the Spring rush. Another month and we'll miss out on the best opportunity to sell her quickly at the best price. (We can't sell Erbas until we have Pagan at Fambridge because I need somewhere to live whilst working! She could go on the market though but further advice, which I'm happy to accept, is that she'll sell better out of Clarke and Carter's sales area at Burnham so the sooner we can get her down there, the better)

All of the above is why my plans had been to get everything sorted by the end of March, if not sooner. Ho hum, best laid plans and all that.

A further consideration is the cost of short term moorings if we have a significant delay between taking over the boat and bringing her back. It could add up to a substantial sum of money horribly quickly.

If we push the paperwork through quickly, we could potentially be in a position to fetch 'Pagan' as will be back from the Hamble the week commencing the 4th. More likely it will be the week commencing the 11th.

And that's where the weather comes in ...

For several days now, the long range GFS forecast has been predicting rather too much wind during that first week and mostly from precisely the wrong direction to add insult to injury. The situation then gets worse towards the end of the weekend with every indication that the conditions will be much the same well into the following week.

Of course, the accuracy of forecasts that far ahead is always dubious but the other models all show much the same trend.

There is, in the latest model runs, a ray of hope. There appears to be a weather window opening up for about 48 hours around Friday the 8th into Saturday the 9th. (It then goes moderately pants on Sunday (F5 gusting 6 or 7) which may affect plans to sail one of the fleet to Ipswich and back that weekend)

That may mean missing out on the suppers and collaring whoever I can wangle into crewing a non-stop blast back which will take around 36 hours. I'd rather take 3, 4 or even 5 days over the trip and make it a pleasure cruise but it may be a case of needs must.

There is another possible 48 hour window from early on Monday the 4th into Tuesday but that may be too soon to get the paperwork sorted.

What would be nice would be for those two weather windows to join up!

If we end up needing to leave the boat in the Solent area for a couple of weeks, it would be financially advantageous to move her the 14 miles in the wrong direction from Port Hamble to Lymington Yacht Haven where, as Yacht Havens berth holders, we can get up to 14 days free mooring. I'm keeping that option in my back pocket just in case!

There will doubtless be more waffle to come and of course this is all dependent on the outcome of the survey and sea trial!