Selecting the right gear...

Coming into a crowded marina late at night after a great day sailing across Lyme Bay, Andrew Carter's feathering prop failed and jammed in 'full ahead' - even when engaged in astern

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Dorset’s Jurassic Coast near Bridport has been a regular holiday spot of mine since I was in short trousers. But despite having enjoyed many (often very productive) fishing trips aboard charter boats, I had never once in the ensuing 50 years actually sailed into the harbour at West Bay.

The entrance has been significantly improved over the years and, with the wind coming from the north-west, the opportunity arose to punctuate the otherwise tedious trudge across Lyme Bay when coming back up-Channel – on this occasion from Falmouth towards Weymouth, Yarmouth and Portsmouth.

The entrance is tight and the pontoons are slightly bouncy, but in glorious late-summer sunshine my elder sister and I enjoyed a very pleasant evening and morning ashore, before slipping lines mid-afternoon in order to catch the first of the tide around Portland Bill, yet still have time to make it into the marina by nightfall.

Over the winter I’d refurbished my built-like-a-brick-outhouse Westerly Discus extensively, and the crisp new sails and freshly-taut standing rigging had added at least a knot and a dozen degrees to our progress upwind.

And on those lazy days when there was no wind, or when the wind was just a little too fine on the bow for an old bilge-keel ketch to catch, then the shiny new feathering propeller (all the work had been carried out by a Solent-based boatyard) had little trouble biting into the Channel chop and taking us purposefully to windward.