The winds for the last few weeks have been from the North and would have afforded opportunities to sail down river instead of up as I do when the wind is in the South. The idea being that the outward journey is up wind and therefore the slowest and the return journey is the opposite.

Or it would have done if the wind strength had been either not as much or more than it was. Too many times the wind was either too strong or none at all for Naiad to be sailed.

Today, however, the wind was not perfect for a sail but good enough and I pushed back out of my mooring at 08:15, hoisted all sail and started the sail down river. Since this was mainly against the wind I tacked a lot in the two and half miles to Modney Bridge and the last half mile or so was tacking against virtually no wind due to the trees and buildings. The return trip took about an hour and a quarter.

Still it was a lovely sail.

Maybe next time I'll remember to set up the camera!

Looking back towards Modney Bridge. It's round the bend in the river about a mile. As you can see, there is not a lot of wind.

The view forward. I passed several club members on the trip back to the club, it's the start of the annual Summer Trip Away. A lot of the members, being retired, take their boats and go far afield for six to eight weeks and today was obviously the day to start.

Tina was out riding at the same time as I was sailing and for once we were able to cross paths.

Here's a photo of Naiad sailing that she managed to take whist trying to keep Hope under control. Hope was scared of that big, horse-eating, white, flappy thing that was certainly going to leap out and devour her.

I really do need to get a set of professionally made sails, these ones will do for now but are not really good enough for the long term. I wonder how much a new set of sails will cost?