Hi guys Sorry for the suspense, I assure you it was not my plan and was completely unintentional, plagued by interruptions. Here’s the story behind the trip. As you all know, when you move somewhere new there is always apprehension whether you will have good neighbours and whether they will be like minded. We’ve made some great friends since moving and not surprisingly they are either into water sports, paddle boarding or boating. A while ago I got into heavy conversation with my neighbour opposite and we talked at length about motor boats and sailing, he owns a Rib and owned a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 39. Whereas I have been boating for most of my life and raced dinghies in my teens and sailed a few Moody’s, he has had about 5yrs with them, but to be fair he did the right thing and has taken a couple of RYA exams. The 39 was restricted by its width and surprisingly the extra few feet in length of a longer boat is much better for them. Therefore, he bought a Sun Odyssey 45 which, although a tad older, is immaculate. The purchase transaction was a little protracted (typical) but eventually took place last Tuesday. He was helped by a friend, an RYA trainer to help learn the ropes, so to speak as well as his son. He asked me if I could come along to helm whilst he got to grips with everything with his son and trainer, well I was honoured and it took me exactly a nanosecond to accept. The boat was in Swanwick Marina and had to get to Lymington Yacht Haven, approx. 16nm in all. We left here at 9.00am and left cars at Yacht Haven where he’d organised a Limo service to take us all to Swanwick, very nice I must say! Paperwork done, we headed off to board Crazy Ivan. What we found a bit strange was the broker didn’t make any effort to do a hand over, you know, like which switches do what etc. although most of them are clearly marked, some of the main power switches were hidden. They just handed over the keys, so we spent the next hour or so working out which switch does what. Now this boat has a bow thruster which extends from the hull rather than being cut into the bow and once we had worked out which switch does what there was another isolator in the for’ard cabin which required activating. So, the next thing was the sails, the main was in place and luckily it was slab reefed, but there was a cruising chute (Genoa) and a spinnaker, so we set about setting up the chute. It was a little embarrassing for the instructor as he set up the furling the wrong way round to start with but got it sorted in the end. A few hours later we took her off her temporary berth and took her over to the fuel berth. Another learning curve was the fuel gauge wasn’t reading. With this gauge the ignition has to be on and a switch held on, it is on a spring which sets it back to off. Once it was decided that the tank was full we set off and ambled down the Hamble…lol! As always the Hamble is full of very expensive boats as well as a few old classics as you will see in the compilation video. The wind started ENE in Southampton Water and the Solent but veered East past Cowes. With a very light breeze off the stern we motored for a while with only 1kt of tide. I had forgotten that things happen very slowly on a yacht, especially when a large car transporter ship was coming across our bows, but the fact we were only achieving 4.5knts it was across us before we were even 1km away. As we came perpendicular to Leap House at the entrance to the Beaulieu River the wind strengthened veering ESE and we were able to tighten the sails and bring her to a descent speed, well for a yacht anyway. With some adjustments and true wind speed now of 8knts, the apparent wind was 13knts so I brought her up to 7knts which for a mono hull is very good. We then had another wind shift which at first felt like a sea breeze, but we hadn’t had much in the way of sunshine. There was some bad weather over land so we concluded a front may be passing. Anyway, the wind picked up nicely with 11knts true ESE and 15knts apparent from the SW and with some trimming got to just shy of 9knts. Crazy Ivan was very well balanced with that large cruising chute and once pointed nicely upwind as far as I dare, I could take my hands off the wheel. We sailed up to just East of Hurst then took a gentle turn to head into Lymington arriving at the berth about 16.30. I must say it was an enjoyable day and yes, I wish I could afford to own her. Did I miss having a throttle handle that when pushed forward the boat would leap up on the plane, well of course. I was finding that I was making course corrections far too early mainly because we were going so slowly, at 40mph it is so different. I hope you enjoy the video compilation which I made for Andy. There are some pictures when we first saw the boat and of the pick up. Please, if the music drives you nuts after a while, turn the sound down, oh and I ran out of Go Pro battery so on the fairway into Lymington used my phone.