0
0
Sailing on SS Shieldhall out of Southampton has become an annual event.
This year, we were sailing out to see the Solent Forts. We’ve caught glimpses of them previously when we’ve cruised as ships tend to sail past them leaving Southampton, and heading out towards Portsmouth.
We left home just after 8am as we wanted to try and get seats undercover as the forecast wasn’t brilliant. It was a very quick journey down with little traffic on the roads. We weren’t sure if Shieldhall would be serving breakfast onboard so we stopped at McDonalds by Dock Gate 20 instead.
With the Docks works ongoing all year, they moved to car park to another site about 15 minutes walk away. All very well organised and marshalls along the footpaths ensuring we didn’t stray.
A lot of others had the same idea and the ship was already busy with people onboard. We needn’t have wondered as the smell of bacon was wafting around the decks!!
It was quite chilly and glad we had brought some thicker coats (although I wish I had worn long trousers rather than cropped). The previous sailings has all been nice and sunny.
Yesterday’s sailing met slightly rough seas with spray coming over the bow. You could see the disappointment in Jon’s face when they said today’s crossing would be much calmer.
Sail out delayed whilst three tugs manoeuvred the container ship, Cosco Hope into position to sail out of Southampton. She was heading for Antwerp. Once they got her lined up to sail out, we could reverse out and swing around into position.
We were on our way. A car transporter ship had arrived and was slowly lowering its bright yellow ramp. We then sailed past Norwegian Sky and Liberty of the Seas. Norwegian Sky was the smallest of the three cruise ships in today. Just two decks of balcony cabins. What was weird was that each balcony cabin had a porthole and door to get onto the balcony … Not patio doors as we’ve been used to when we’ve sailed.
Liberty of the Seas was larger (Azura size) and came with waterslides and tubes and a wave machine for surfing.
Just further down, Arvia was in Ocean Terminal. The back of the ship was quite stark. Windows for the restaurant at the bottom, and tiered balcony cabins rising up to the infinity pool and upper decks. Not sure if they’ve resolved to the issues with the overflow from the infinity pool as the balconies immediately below would receive frequent and unexpected showers.
Upon reaching the bottom of the Solent, Cosco Hope had to veer right to sail around Spatial Bank. Shieldhall could bypass this detour as they had a much lower draft so wouldn’t get grounded.
You could see Portsmouth in the distance with it’s Spinnaker Tower rising up.
There are around 4 solent forts in the channel. Before COVID, one was a hotel and restaurant and we had looked at booking but never got around to it. These two loomed large from the water. Another Spitbank fort was further out and a fourth, St Helen’s Fort, was a small fort close to the Isle of Wight.
Time for lunch and Callum and Jon headed down to grab some food. They came back really proud to say that I got the very last Jacket Potato – it was tiny, like a large new potato … and it was cold!! I had tuna and cheese on top. They they revealed that my jacket potato was twice the price of the burgers!! Those were warm … and both had decided to have mushrooms in the burger as well.
We continued sailing past the forts out into the English Channel before turning around to head back to base, catching another glimpse of these historic forts.
As we started sailing up the Solent, we passed Norwegian Sky. It seems to be a new ship sailing out of Southampton and not sure they knew what to make of SS Shieldhall. She did not reply to the Shieldhall whistle!
We were pleasantly surprised to see that Arvia had set sail too – she doesn’t normally sail until much later as there’s a lot of passengers to board. At least she did return Shieldhall’s whistle and lots of passengers on the balcony and up on deck waving. She is a big ship though.
Another container ship had berthed next to Shieldhall’s berth but no action unloading/loading this evening.
For Shieldhall, it was a matter of tethering up. We stood at the back to watch the volunteers use the ropes to secure the ship. Then, drama! One of the lines snapped … and the captain scraped the side of the ship against the dock!
They quickly got the reserve rope ready and once Shieldhall had been secured, we could disembark. A 15 minute walk back to the car park and we were on our way home.
