Salcombe to Swanage to Poole to Itchenor

Days 2,3 and 4.
First a couple of apologies. A) To those of you who have not been able to view the comments on the blog. I'm not sure why this is but when I get a wifi connection (this is coming via Ians phone, so is text only - photos later) I'll try to sort it out. B) People have be asking why days 2 and 3 are missing....well read on.
Having lost a day in Salcombe for repairs we went back into the water at 7am on Monday. I was awake but the crew slept on and they all had the same "flying" dream as the boat was picked up by the crane and plonked back in. Hurrah - no leaks. She is dry for the first time I know of. So we left Salcombe at 9am with a view to seeing how far we could get to catch up on time. After a long day of directly down wind, which need a lot of concentration, and not a small amount of rain we arrived in Swanage, Dorset at 11pm. We tried to tie up by the pier as suggested by the almanac but it was not a good mooring for various reasons. So we looked by the other boats moored nearby for something suitable. We ended up tying onto a spare bouy but on inspection we saw it was attached by nothing more than a small piece of blue rope to the seabed. Not good enough for a yacht in a force 7!
So I had to make the decision to go on another ten miles to Poole harbour and put into a marina, where we finally arrived at 0215.
In the morning at 8am they tried to charge me £42.50 for our 6 hour stay. I made a bit of a fuss and this was reduced to £14. You can get cheaper parking in central London!
Off from Poole at 0900 to get a fair tide and there followed a cracking sail past the Needles (over the Christchurch Shelf which was a complete maelstrom - photos to follow) and down the Solent to Itchenor which is where we now lie as I write this. In the Solent we had a strong following wind but a fairly flat sea so we managed the highest speed I have ever had from Gamaldansk - 10.2 knots through the water. This was achieved using only the jib!
So we are back on track timewise despite the early hiccups and it's off to Eastbourne tomorrow.