Hoist The Sails in the Channel!
Our meeting point is Hamble Point Marina. The marina is located between Southampton (7.5 miles / 12 km) and Portsmouth (18 miles / 29 km). It is easily accessible by train or by road.
Meeting day and time
Please pay attention that for this trip, we are sailing from FRIDAY to FRIDAY.
Check-in: Friday 26 July 16:00
Check-out: Friday 2 Aug 11:00
Please remember the following:
- Before the check-in day your skipper will email you and your crew to coordinate the very details of the first day and agree on the exact meeting point. Upon arrival you will recognize the yacht you will sail on by the Naleia Yachting flags.
- Check-in hour: Friday at 16h00. It would be great if you could arrive to the marina before 16h00 to have enough time to provision the yacht together with your crew. Later arrivals are allowed if you don’t have another choice. Your crew will do the shopping for you, so be considerate and bring them a little thank-you present. Sweets from your home country work best ;). We will leave the marina on Saturday morning, after the breakfast, and after the safety briefing.
- Check-out hour: 11h00 on the last day of the trip (Friday). We may come back to the marina already on Thursday evening. We may go out to share a dinner and spend the last night on the boat talking long into the dark.
UK Sailing Trip
“Across The Channel” Route
🏊 May – October
📅 7 nights
🌍 UK, Hamble
🌠 Night sailing, Tides, Pints
💨 Moderate Winds
🌊 Tidal Swell and Current
Check Dates & Prices
Talk To Us*
*To sail at other dates; to organize a private trip; to get in touch.
Learn To Sail Course
Included in every trip we organize is a basic sailing course. We follow the methodology of the Royal Yachting Association and we go with you through the Competent Crew course.
For this sailing trip we assume that you have some sailing experience, so we will go more quickly through the basics (safety, mooring, anchoring, wind and sail trim) as a refresher, and focus more on tidal calculations, currents, passage planning, and recognising the lights at night.
The course is absolutely free of charge and the purpose is that you understand how to participate in most of the sailing related activities, feel safe and comfortable on the yacht and catch a bit of passion for sailing. The skipper is there for you to offer guidance while you and the crew are there to sail the boat. It’s a hands on experience. The sailing course serves also as a form of team building: providing easy goals for the crew to be achieved together.
Course content (basics): knowledge of sea terms and parts of a boat, rigging and sails, sail handling, ropework, fire precautions and fighting, personal safety equipment, man overboard, emergency equipment, meteorology, seasickness, helmsmanship, general duties, manners and customs, rules of the road, standard manoeuvres, dinghies.
Course content (advanced): Extra on this trip: tides and currents calculations, course to steer, charts and navigation, night sailing, lights and signals, watch keeping.
Ability after the course: able to steer, handle sails and trim them to the wind, keep a lookout, avoid collisions, navigate, read charts, plan a daily passage, row a dinghy and assist in all the day to day routines. Example of manoeuvres which you should be able to perform with your crew: hoisting and putting down the sails, jibing, tacking, trimming the sails, man overboard. Example of manoeuvres where you will assist your skipper: anchoring, mooring at the buoy, mooring in the marina. Extra on this trip: able to keep a night watch, recognize vessels by their lights.
This Channel Crossing trip will be an ideal preparation if you are thinking of passing your RYA Day Skipper or another national sailing qualification.
The Team
Skippers
Arriving instructions
BY PUBLIC TRANSPORT (TRAIN + BUS)
From either Southampton or Portsmouth, take the train to the station ‘Hamble’. From the station, you can either walk (2 miles / 3km, 40 min) or take bus number 6 from Hamble Lane School to Copse Lane. From there, it’s another 1 miles / 1.5km (20 min) walk.
BY TRAIN + TAXI
Take the train to Southampton Parkway (airport). This is a 20 minute taxi ride from Hamble Point Marina. It is preferable to use Southampton Parkway rather than Hamble station due to the lack of taxis at the station in Hamble.
BY PLANE
The nearest airport is Southampton Airport, a 20 minute taxi ride from Hamble Point Marina.
BY CAR
The postcode for your Sat Nav is SO31 4NB. Bear left as you enter the marina and park in the vicinity of the Ketch Rigger pub.
MARINA ADDRESS
Hamble Point Marina, School Ln, Hamble-le-Rice, Southampton SO31 4JD
Hamble Point Marina
Additional Costs Channel Crossing
Except the booking fee there are variable additional costs which you should budget for. Additional costs highly depend on the way you and your crew want to spend the trip. These costs are only to be paid upon arrival. A volunteer from your crew will handle all the boat expenses.
~175€ pp/week
Of which:
- Groceries, drinking water for the yacht: 80€
- Diesel fuel for the yacht: 15€
- Restaurants and pubs incl. food for the skipper: 60€ approx
- Harbours and marinas: 20€
The Organizational Process
- Before you book: make sure this sort of social sailing experience is for you. Read more about our trips on our website: The Concept, Living On the Yacht, Yacht Life Rules, watch our photos, or videos, or fill our Expectations Checker.
- Booking: once you decide to book, go to: www.naleiayachting.com/book-now/ and follow the instructions on screen. If you are joining with a friend, create two separate bookings and write in the designated field that you want to share a cabin or be on the same yacht. If you book more than 40 days in advance you will pay only 50% of the booking fee to save your spot.
- Confirmations: Once you made the booking you will immediately receive an email with a confirmation and your invoice. We will send you a useful packing checklist to help you know what to take, best advice is to travel light!
- Balance payment: you will be automatically reminded to pay the balance (second 50% of the booking fee). No worries 🙂
- Before the check-in day: around 1 week before the departure your skipper will send you and your crew an email to connect the people and coordinate the check-in day. Upon arrival you will recognize the yacht you will sail on by the Naleia Yachting flags.
- Check-in: it would be great if you could be in the marina on the check-in day before 16h00. That should give enough time to provision the yacht and share a welcome dinner somewhere in the city in a comfortable pace. Late arrivals are accepted but need to be compensated to the crew with some local sweets from your home 😉
- Leaving the marina: usually we leave the marina only on the day after the check-in. There is so much to do on the check-in that rushing the departure kills the
holiday mood. - Coming back to the marina: we usually come back to the port on the day before the check-out day and have a dinner together. We still sleep on the boats! Note: sometimes, if the crew and the boat owner agrees, we come back to the marina very early on the check-in day.
- Check-out: the usual check-out time is 09h00 in the morning, which is when we need to leave the boats.
- After the trip: you receive an email asking you to review the trip you participated in, as well as an email to a photo-sharing server so that you can exchange memories with the other crew members.
Most Frequent Questions
HOW MUCH EXPERIENCE DO I NEED?
The Channel Crossing is a more demanding sailing than the trips we usually propose. We therefore do not recommend it as a first sailing experience. We would advise that you have done let’s say a week of sailing before and feel reasonably comfortable on a boat. In any case we will make sure that the crew comprises a few more experienced sailors to act as watch leaders.
HOW ROUGH WILL THE CONDITIONS BE AT SEA?
The Channel Crossing is open sea. We will not leave if the forecast is any higher than Beaufort force 5, but even in F5 some 2-3m waves can make the trip pretty rough. On the other side, we may have no wind at all, and spend the whole night running the engine with the sea as flat as a mill pond. In any case, we wouldn’t recommend the trip if you are particularly sensitive to sea sickness.
WHEN CAN I CHECK-IN ON THE FIRST DAY AND WHEN DO WE ARRIVE TO MARINA ON THE LAST DAY?
Unusually for this trip, we are sailing FRIDAY to FRIDAY. Check-in is on Friday at 16:00. If you arrive earlier, you can meet the other crew and prepare the week’s shopping list for the grocery shopping. That is why it is good to arrive not later than the check-in time. We will leave the port the next morning (Saturday) after breakfast.
We will come back to the home marina on either Thursday evening or Friday morning, depending on the weather and your availabilities. If you can, try therefore not to book your transport back home before Friday afternoon, so you won’t be in a rush when leaving the boat. In any case if we come back on Thursday evening, we can still spend the last night on the boat. We need to check-out and leave the yachts before 11h00 on Friday morning.
WHO WILL BE ON MY YACHT?
Around 50% of the people who come to my sailing holidays are coming solo. 25% in groups of 2 and 25% in the group of 3 and more. As there is a few yachts I take special care in matching people to the crews. I even wrote a little blog post about that: Matching Yacht Crews for Sailing Holidays
WHAT DOES THE EXACT ITINERARY LOOK LIKE?
At Naleia we plan as we go according to the weather conditions and all crews’ moods. There are a variety of places that we can visit, but the order and exact choice is only made each morning after verifying the weather conditions, the tides and the currents.
Always Included
Yacht
A comfy bed on a fully equipped 12-16m sailing yacht, tender, end cleaning, tourist taxes, bed linen, towels, etc… If you join solo you share a same-sex cabin.
Skipper
Pro Skipper who is in charge of sailing. S/he is a part of your crew, facilitates the trip and shows you the best secret spots.
Learn To Sail
Basic Learn-To-Sail course for anyone who wishes to learn. The course covers RYA Competent Crew course curriculum. It`s mostly hands on!
Security
Damage waiver (no deposit needed) and a travel insurance covering sailing incidents. Be yourself and enjoy. We got you covered!