Day Four: 17th

Today dawned cold and grey, so much for it being nearly summer!  The plan for today was to head along the coast of the Isle of Wight back towards Cowes as, having left quite early on Tuesday, we needed to return to pay for our berth.  We would then head across the Solent back to Gosport.  After an uneventful trip to Cowes it was decided we would go to anchor for lunch in a bay just in front of Osborne House, the favourite residence of Queen Victoria – unfortunately we couldn’t really see the house due to the trees.

Going to anchor was a real team evolution with us needing to rig one of the spinnaker halyards from the head of the mast to lift the anchor out of the fore peak store and than faff around to get it over the pulpit rail (the front of the boat) and into the water.  The whole process then needed to be repeated to get it back in except, this time, I had to move the sails out of the forepeak store to get access to the anchor chain locker so that I could make sure it was going in neatly.  All in all a bit of a pain but I suppose we were meant to be learning.

As we headed back to Gosport for the evening the skipper decided to have a short race between each of the watches.  The idea was that first one watch would take the boat around two markers in a figure of 8 course followed by the other watch.  Our watch, consisting of three old blokes on the sails and a young helmsman, went first and set a time of 7 minutes 36 seconds.  The other watch, consisting of three young blokes on the sails and one old bloke on the helm, had their go…and beat us by 10 seconds. We figured given the age and experience differences that ours wasn’t such a bad effort. 

 Sailing – there sure is a lot of sitting around!

With the races finished we headed back to homeport, passing some of Palmerston’s Follies, which are a series of island forts.  The forts were built during the Victorian period on the recommendations of the 1860 Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, following concerns about the strength of the French Navy, and strenuous debate in parliament about whether the cost could be justified.  The name comes from their association with Lord Palmerston, who was Prime Minister at the time and promoted the idea.  The works were also known as Palmerston's Follies as, by the time they were completed, the threat (if it had ever existed) had passed, largely due to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and furthermore the technology of the guns had become out-of-date.  They were the most costly and extensive system of fixed defences undertaken in Britain in peacetime.

The Follies in Portsmouth Harbour consist of three forts, Spitbank Fort, St Helen’s Fort and No Man’s Land Fort. The basic construction of each of the forts is a ring of masonry consisting of large concrete blocks with an outer skin of granite blocks, the interior being filled with clay and shingle and covered with a thick layer of concrete.  The lower foundation walls of fort are 59 ft thick.  The fort is split into 3 levels with the top measuring 204 ft 9” in diameter. The floors would have originally provided storage for armoury and guns and the things needed to sustain the men that were stationed on site.  The top of the fort consisted of a lighthouse and various chimneys and ventilators.  The fort has its own Artesian well (aquifer), which provided fresh water.  The seaward side of the fort was covered in a heavy iron armoured plating to protect it from sea borne attack.  Access to the fort was via a wooden decked landing stage supported on cast iron piles.  They are now all privately owned with one being a nightclub, one a private residence and the final one being renovated to be a museum.

After passing the Follies it was back into the JSASTC facility for the night.

 The follies