The Odyssey's bit before the Odyssey actually starts

 Just add water.. 


 In order to start the journey Tzu needed putting back in the water and provisioning with what seemed a huge amount of shopping from Tesco.  So a thank you to Nick Kieffer the driver and Tim Robson at Marchwood Yacht Club for so ably depositing Tzu in the water along with four other boats.  

It almost seems a shame that Tzu had no emergencies on May Day but I'm quite glad to have avoided that.  


After waking up to the cruise ship Aurora almost quietly sneaking in to port just after dawn (appropriately, Aurora was the Roman goddess of the sunrise) the followng day I did a few tidying tasks and the shopping and we did a test sail down to Newtown Creek, down the Solent towards Yarmouth.  A rather beautiful place and one of the quietest places in the area to park a yacht.



I've been doing a fair bit of planning for the first leg of our journey which will probably entail an'early o'clock' start to catch the ebbing tide out of the Solent.  My planned route goes partially across the edge of the Lulworth Ranges outer range.  My Reeds (pilot book) gives a number to ring to get a recorded message of firing times into the range.   I was somewhat surprised when a cheerful chap answered who was very helpful.  He explained that they, the army, rarely use the outer range but the navy sometimes do.  And I could always tell the navy to f off, and if necessary to quote him.   

I love this country.

Stay tuned and ready for the next instalment, it will hopefully tell you about our heroic eighty mile night time crossing and our arrival in Dartmouth

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