Solo Sailing to Weymouth in Rough Conditions

A four day trip in my Trapper 28 to Weymouth and back. I did the trip there solo and my friend Michel joined me for the return leg. Day 1 was perfect sailing conditions, force 4 north west wind so I made great progress to Studland Bay. Day 2 was forecast the same but turned out to be westerly force 5 gusting to 6. Very big steep waves that got worse as I got further offshore. I was trying to get around Lulworth ranges as they were active but I was worried that some was going to break in the worsening conditions so I made the decision to head inshore. After I tacked to head offshore, the range boat told me to leave the area (which I was already doing). Made it into Weymouth Harbour to meet Michel for a well earned dinner and drink at the pub. We left early on day 3 to tried and make it before the tide turned. Wind was initially very gentle and downwind so it was a nice relaxing sail through my battleground yesterday. Unfortunately we were a little slow and the tide turned as we reached Durlston head so we had to hammer the engine to crawl round the corner and make it to Studland Bay. It was quite choppy in Studland Bay so we decided to spend the night in Poole Harbour. We left the following morning to head back to Southampton. We had a great sail through the Needles channel and up the Solent and just as we got to Cowes the wind died so we had to motor back into Southampton Water. I dropped Michel off at the remains of the boat show so he could walk to the station and retrieve his van from Weymouth. A fun and challenging trip where I learnt a lot! Follow our boat on NOFOREIGNLAND: https://www.noforeignland.com/boat/46...