Last weekend Dad and I drove down to the boat in Plymouth
Thursday evening after I’d finished work. Dad’s recently retired, so had
already finished work back at the end of March; Nik, sadly, had to work through
the holiday weekend so wouldn’t be able to join us.
The forecast suggested the best wind would be Friday, an
easterly F4 to 5, fading as the day wore one. Saturday and Sunday had the wind
falling off to an F2 or 3, staying in the east, maybe with a bit more south in
it. The plan was an early start Friday morning, ride the wind the 40 nautical
miles downhill to Falmouth, and split the journey back home over the rest of
the long Easter weekend into 20 mile chunks with stopovers in Fowey and the
Yealm. Then arrive back in Plymouth early Monday and get on the road as quickly
as possible to try and avoid the worst of the bank holiday traffic.
Friday 19th April : Plymouth to Falmouth
(40.5 nautical miles, 7 hours 8 minutes underway)
Friday morning, up at 0530 to hit the marina showers then
ready the boat to cast off for 0730, half an hour later than I’d planned. I
don’t take two hours to shower and go, but Dad moves at his own pace these days
and time nor tide have little dominion. Did I mention he’s quite enjoying his
retirement?
If we’d been slow at the off, the weather had clearly blown
through earlier than expected. By 0800 we were clearing the Western Entrance,
Cawsands off our starboard beam, and the hoped for easterly breeze was
exceptionally light. With 40 miles to cover, and deadlines to meet (the primary
one being the need for me to be back at work on Tuesday) we continued to motor-sail
under the main. With a spring tide running fair for the first couple of hours
of morning, we were making very good progress without needing to labour the
engine, or our patience with it.
Around 1100, about 6 miles offshore, Fowey and Gribbin Head
in the hazy distance off our starboard beam, a pair of dolphins joined us.
Dad
spotted them first, he’d been trying to make out the distant day mark atop
Gribbin Head and had seen one broach about 500 meters yards away. They
disappeared briefly, and I quelled my disappointment at having missed the
sight, before they reappeared again right beside us, lacing through the water,
arcing and twisting as they played back and forth across Calstar’s slight
bow-wave. Dad reckons there were three, I counted two, but they were lovely and kept company with us for about five minutes. They quite made up for the lack of
wind.
By 1400 we rounded St Anthony’s Head and entered the Carrick
Roads outside Falmouth. Predictably, the wind began to fill in, but by now Dad was eager to land
somewhere for the night and get ashore to stretch his legs. We made directly
for the Falmouth Yacht Haven, and made safe alongside the pontoon just before
1500; a shade over 40 miles behind us and slightly over 7 hours underway. All
of it sadly with the assistance of the engine.
I say sadly, but it would've been sadder had the engine failed us; the weather was gorgeously warm and it was
a delight just to be afloat.
We dined Friday night on the balcony of a Falmouth restaurant
called Amanzi. The view and the food were
both lovely.
Saturday 20th April : Falmouth to Fowey
(23.4 nautical miles, 6 hours 29 minutes underway)
We cast off from Falmouth at 0930, flagrantly late on the tide, and
further delayed our departure by queuing an hour for the fuel barge. By 1000 we
were properly on our way, but with only an hour of fair tide left to exploit.
Expecting a F2 - 3 from the east for most of the day, my plan was to stand off from the shore once we were clear of the Carrick Roads then tack and beat along the
coast. By 1030 we’d cleared the headland and cut the engine, but over the next
fifteen minutes saw what little wind we’d started with die off and the tide
begin to turn foul.
We scrapped my originally optimistic plan of sailing, restarted
the engine, and turning towards Fowey 20 miles distant, furled the headsail,
resigning ourselves to motor-sailing under the main again for the next few
hours.
We spent the day basking in the Easter sunshine, reading,
jellyfish spotting and keeping a weather eye out for more dolphins. The Cornish
waters were thick (I exaggerate, but only a little) with barrel jellyfish.
The size of dustbin lids, they are surreal, otherworldly, harmless creatures, gently
pulsing as they ghosted through the clear smooth waters just beneath the surface,
feasting on the invisible spring plankton bloom.
A little while after rounding Dodman Point at 1300, just off
picturesque Gorran Haven, a sea breeze began to fill in from astern. We cut
the engine and gently tricked along for a while, sails goose-winged with the
boat on a dead run, but made little headway across St Austell’s Bay despite the
grip of the foul tide easing as the hours wore on into the afternoon.
An
hour and a half later, with only a mile and a half covered in the time and
Gorran Haven still very visible over our port quarter, the seas turned glassy,
the tease of a wind finally ceased and we once more started the engine. We were
comforted by the brief sighting of a pod of porpoises about 50 meters off our
port bow, but the shy creatures came no closer.
We landed in Fowey just before 1630, a little more than 23
miles of travel behind us and a relatively slow passage time just shy of 7 hours;
we’d covered almost twice the distance in that time on our passage to Falmouth
the day before. The tides on this coast are so slight compared to our old home
waters in the Bristol Channel that the temptation to disregard them is always
there; but our passage time to Fowey was a stark indication, as if any were
needed, of the difference between a fair tide and a foul, even in these waters.
The wait for a table at my favourite Fowey restaurant Sams
was over an hour by the time we finally got there. Dad had the casting vote,
so we avoided the queue and headed over to the Galleon instead where we enjoyed a
perfectly respectable cod and chips on their veranda overlooking the bustle of
the harbour. We called in for a pint at the Fowey Gallants Sailing Club on our way back to the boat. Their beer is
unfailingly good and their clubhouse bar has the best view of any sailing club
I know.
Sunday 21st April : Fowey to The Yealm
(26.6 nautical miles, 7 hours 26 minutes underway)
The forecast for wind on Sunday wasn’t promising at all,
slightly more south in it but no stronger than the day before. Low water
Plymouth was expected 1418, so to make the most of the fair tide we got up early
and cast off from Fowey just after 0730.
As we were preparing to cast off, a Cornish Crabber 22
called “Chocolat” motored past us on her way out of the harbour which put a
smile on my face. Back in the summer of 2014 Dad and I had brought our old Drascombe Lugger “Ondine” down to Fowey for the
weekend. On the pontoons upriver at Penmarlam, a lady from a neighbouring boat
had ambled over to remark on how lovely Drascombes were. B was the skipper of
the Crabber 22 “Chocolat”, and ended up accompanying us in the Lugger for a
day-sail over to Polperro and back.
Five years later and no longer with the Drascombe, there is
no way she’d have recognised us aboard the Westerly as she cheerfully waved
back whilst passing, but I recognised her, and was very pleased to see she was
well and clearly still enjoying the delights of her lovely little yacht.
With no great hopes of a decent sailing wind, we motor-sailed
with just the main set again, but keeping closer to the shore than for the first few
miles, enjoying the sights of Polperro and Looe in the fine early morning
light. Off Looe Island around 0900 the wind filled in enough to tempt us into stopping
the engine. Over the next hour we covered a little more than a mile before the
wind completely gave up the ghost and we fired the engine back up. The sea was
a flat calm as we motored gently towards the slowing closing edifice of Rame
Head.
By noon we were passing the headland; the Longroom in
Plymouth reported the windspeed as 7 knots on the breakwater, and the tide had turned foul for
us. Nonetheless, around 1230 enough of a sea breeze sprung up to tempt us into
sailing once again. Only half an hour of very gentle beating before it failed
once more and we returned to moto-rsailing. Off Wembury Bay an hour later we
tried again, but within 20 minutes once more gave up the ghost.
We reached the mouth of the Yealm at low water, around 1430.
At low tide there is only a meter of water in the narrow passage across the south end of the sand bar at the mouth of the
river, clearly visible just beneath the surface with holiday makers paddling out across it in water no higher than their knees. Calstar only draws a meter, and the tide
table said LW should still have 0.3m on top of chart datum, so we gently chanced entering; there really wasn’t much room
between the end of the bar and the very visible, rocky foreshore on the other side of the passage, but as long as
we stayed with the entrance passage we’d only ground on clean sand if we got it
wrong.
It was a little nerve wracking, following the transits,
avoiding swimmers, anchored boats and paddle boarders, and periodically
silencing the shallow water warning alarm on our depth sounder before reaching the slightly deeper
water of the river proper, and then picking our way up river through the crowded
moorings to the visitor pontoons, but it passed without mishap.
The first pontoon was full, with boats rafted up to three
abreast. We bleakly made our way further up river to the second, expecting the
same, and half expecting to have to turn around and head back out, perhaps to
anchor overnight in Wembury Bay or even head the rest of the way back to
Plymouth, but to our surprise found the shore side half of the upriver
visitor’s pontoon completely clear, which made for a very easy landing.
We made fast at 1504, just shy of 26 miles behind us and
seven and a half hours underway; just over five hours of that had been on
engine, but we’d managed to get a little more sailing in that on the previous
days, so were not unhappy. We took the tender up the river to find a supper of
whitebait at the Dolphin Inn in Newton Ferrers. A tidy little pub and very
friendly, and even if the food was a little less than piping hot by the time
they got it to us on their second attempt to find our table (don’t ask, I don’t
know!) it was still delicious.
Half way back to the boat, the outboard ran out of fuel. A
passing powerboat kindly offered us a tow, but the tide was still just in our
favour, and we had oars, so Dad and I paddled the rest of the way back. I
think Dad regretted relying on me to check the fuel levels in the outboard (I'd casually glanced in; there was fuel, just not as much as I’d thought), but personally I
quite enjoyed the tranquillity of the river and the light exercise of paddling
back with the flow.
Monday 22nd April : The Yealm to Plymouth
(7.5 nautical miles, 2 hours 8 minutes underway)
After three days of brilliant sunshine, Monday morning
dawned overcast and grey. We cast off in the slack water just after high tide
at 0835 and picked our way down river through the crowded moorings and anchorage,
through the narrow channel around the river bar and out into the choppy waters
of Wembury Bay in the company of a couple of other yachts.
And finally, there was wind.
At 0900, just outside the river mouth, we turned the boat
back towards the bar, head to wind, raised the sails, stilled the engine, then
turned away from the wind onto a deep reach to take us out of the bay. After ten
or fifteen minutes of a southerly course, the yacht to leeward of us gybed and
we did the same, to settle onto a broad starboard reach that would take us clear
around the Mewstone and back into Plymouth.
By 1010 we entered the Sound via the Eastern Entrance, and
wind dying in the lee of the eastern shore, doused the sails and kicked the
engine in to life to motor gently up the Sound and back to the marina at Queen
Anne’s Battery. By 1043 we were safe alongside our home berth, a short trip of seven
and a half miles covered mostly under sail in just over a couple of hours.
Despite our best intentions to make haste, we still failed to
get on the road before 1230, so got snarled up just a little in the homeward
bound Bank Holiday traffic. A small price to pay for four very pleasant days aboard
however; even if there wasn’t much actual sailing to be had, it’s always good just
getting out on the water.
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