Cruise to Royal Southern Yacht Club, Hamble June 28-29

Published 11:00 on 5 Jul 2025

With several boats already out in the Solent following other club cruises, and other boats making their way down from Chichester on the Saturday, we all arrived at Royal Southern early on Saturday afternoon. The sail down from Chichester had been a lively f4 beat, gusting up to f6 briefly at times as we approached Southampton water but everybody was comfortably tied up by 3pm and enjoying the very pleasant surroundings of the Royal Southern Club, and their private marina. 

We had been restricted on numbers, as the Royal Southern do not typically take large numbers of visiting yachts, but they were able to squeeze us in on the few available visitor berths and using berths of members who were away travelling. We had a pontoon party at 6pm which was a great chance to catch up with everyone and then moved up to the delightful first floor restaurant for dinner at 7pm. The views down the Hamble from the restaurant were superb (Possibly on a par with our own upper deck!) and the food was equally impressive. 

By the Sunday morning the wind had dropped to below 5kts, so for most of us it was a motor back to Chichester, with the benefit of a good tide under us and glorious sunshine. As we passed Stokes Bay just before midday, the Red Arrows arrived to provide their display for the armed forces celebrations in Ryde and we must have had the best seats in the house as they performed up and down the length of the Western Solent.

In total we had 10 boats on the cruise, with Haraka, Coco, Sunio, Yalla, Pim, Dawn Chorus, Crayzee Feeling, First Light and Raven all berthing at Royal Southern and with David and Amanda from April Folly arriving by car from their current summer base at Mercury marina.

This was the first time we had visited Royal Southern as a club in recent memory, and we were made to feel very welcome, so hopefully this is something we can look to repeat in the future

Richard and Clare Serna
Haraka