Mary-L: deliverance

The coming weekend is a bank holiday, which means we all get to take Monday off work. I say "we all" but, of course, I generalise. I mean those of us in regular 9-5 jobs. For plenty of others, my wife include as she works in retail, Monday will just be another day of the week.

I don't know that that's fair, but life so rarely is.

A friend of mine who also works in retail but is getting Monday off anyway is taking advantage of the three day holiday to try and move his boat, a 25' yacht called "Mary-L", from Portishead, down along and around the corner to the south coast. He has a mooring reserved on the Dart, but if we can get her to Newlyn or, even better, Falmouth, then he can do the rest himself easily over another weekend or two.

The weather for the weekend looks to be quite settled (the image above is for Lands End) and the neap tide on Saturday is, by Bristol Channel standards, very small (a range of only 3.8m) so it should be a long but very routine slog of a delivery under engine. I am hoping we'll get some sailing in, especially once the wind turns on Sunday, but the main priority is to cover as much ground as possible.

The plan is to leave Portishead at midnight tonight, use the ebb tide to get us down to through the Holmes and on to Minehead, then assess how the crew and boat are doing as the tide turns against us. Then we either push on if we're happy and still making way, or anchor off Minehead and await the next tide.

On paper, the neap tide is so slight it shouldn't really be an impediment this weekend. But that's on paper and this is, after all, the Bristol Channel. So we mean to take a conservative approach and see how it goes.

Opt-outs if anything unexpected comes up are to turn back to Cardiff, divert to Swansea. or put in at Padstow. There is still a lot of ground to cover after Padstow, but once we've passed there, the only option we have if we can't push forward is to turn back.