Trouper’s home port used to be Lymington and it’s one of our favourite spots in Southern England.  When we’d initially dreamed about buying a boat we said we’d keep it in one of the marinas in Lymington.  Tom’s father kept his day boat, a Hawk 20, at Lymington so we used to sail regularly from Lymington across to the Isle of Wight to: Yarmouth, New Town or Cowes as day sails on the little boat.  However it’s at least a three hour drive from the East-end of London and the XoD that we sail is kept in Chichester.  It was inevitable that we’d need to move Trouper.

Once we’d taken ownership we decided to keep Trouper at the Berthon Marina over the first winter.  This was mainly a practical decision as we’d decided to copper-coat the hull to cut down on future anti-fouling work.  Also, we didn’t fancy taking Trouper to Chichester in the November and December storms.

Trouper with winter coat

Instead we travelled down for day trips to visit Trouper and undertake maintenance jobs such as putting the cover on, cleaning the decks, polishing the hull and greasing the seacocks.  Once everything was winterised we had time for a brief rest before reversing the jobs to get her ready to put to sea.

The Berthon marina is an easy walk into town and we did manage, in between the jobs, to enjoy our time in Lymington.  There’s a fantastic range of shops and restaurants and the Berthon Marina is brilliant.  The staff are enormously helpful, there’s every facility you can think of to fix your boat or you including the most fabulous showers on the South Coast.

The majority of our time was spent ashore but the marina berths are also good, with shore power and plenty of berths for visitors.  It’s a protected harbour as it’s a 30 minute motor up the Lymington river and in the rough winter storms of 2013-14 and we were confident that Trouper wasn’t going to be damaged.

In the Summer there’s plenty to see and do ashore as Lymington is on the edge of the New Forest and the Solent so there are water-based and land-based activities.  The limiting factor is time and imagination and, let’s face it, sometimes you just want to read a book in the sunshine.

Spring storm approaching

We sailed Trouper to Chichester in late March 2014.  It started as a beautiful day with sunshine but high winds.  A storm passed through whilst we were off Wotton Creek on the Isle of Wight and we had the full range of high winds and rain.  We realised, at that point, why she’s called Trouper. We saw 40kts over the deck from the West and, even with only a scrap of headsail, we expected some reaction to the increased wind or possibly a slight broach.  We had nothing, Trouper maintained her course.  We felt very safe.