Two go Sailing

We arrived in Dartmouth mid afternoon and managed to secure one of the best berths in town! Dartmouth has a large town quay from which the regular ferries to Kingswear on the other side of the river depart. The Quay is also used by numerous pleasure boats taking folks on trips up the river to Totnes and out into the bay. However inside the quay are about 10 deep water moorings between the quay and the harbour wall. These are provided with an electric hook up and fresh water and a direct walkway into the middle of the town! The only downside is that you are on view to every tourist boarding a pleasure boat - but it is a small price to pay! Teteli moored to the Town Quay While in Dartmouth we received the sad news that a friend of ours had died and the date of his funeral. We knew that, as last Summer, we needed to return home for a while to catch up with our "shore life" so we began to think about places to leave Teteli for a few weeks so that we could get home in time...

The weather in Plymouth was lovely and the position of the Marina meant that we could easily access the city centre with all the delights of a big town on offer! Saturday evening saw us wandering around the famous Hoe in the sunshine before heading back to boat and supper followed by planning for Monday. We then realised that in order to get around the next major headland - Start Point - with a favourable tide a visit to Salcombe would not be possible, or if we did visit Salcombe it would have to be for about  5 days as the skipper doesn't like sailing coastal waters in the dark for fear of becoming entangled in one of the many lobster and crab pots that sit along the coast. In the daylight we do stand a chance of spotting them and it seems a little foolish to put ourselves at risk especially in an area of the coast famous for its shipwrecks! Getting in and out of  Salcombe means crossing the Salcombe bar which for those unfamiliar with the entrance should only be done o...

Cornwall is one of my favourite places and so we decided to spend a little time here. We booked into Falmouth Haven for a couple on nights which gave us time to explore this busy fishing port, sample at least one cream tea and eat some very fresh fish in a lovely little restaurant. The Haven at Falmouth is tucked in behind the dockyard which at the present time is home to the RFA new support vessel Tidesurge who, following her maiden voyage from the yard in South Korea where she was built, is being commissioned in Falmouth.  Whilst we were in the yacht haven we were treated to the sight of Tidesurge being turned around in the harbour. This involved lots of space and four tugs. Now I love watching tugs they are tenacious little boats bravely pushing into the bows of huge vessels and hooking themselves onto large wire hawsers to pull these massive ships around whilst these great monster vessels are in maritime language "constrained in their ability to manoeuvre".  The four li...

All of a sudden everything seems to be about headlands! No sooner have we ticked off Lands End than we had to start planning for the Lizard and then looking further ahead the rounding of Start Point and Portland Bill begin to occupy the skippers mind! We had already spent some time looking at tidal streams and reading up on the course to take around the Lizard and with a fair wind predicted and good sunny weather we left our berth in Newlyn at the very reasonable time of 11 am with the aim of being 3 miles off the Lizard at slack water and then carry a favourable tide around the point and on into Falmouth water and the Helford River. The weather was fair although as had been the case over the previous few days the visibility was not that good and my attempts to photograph St Michaels Mount as we passed it resulted in a grey outline in an otherwise grey sky with a grey blue sea below! In other words nothing!! the wind started out as a lovely northerly F4 and we soon had all the sail...

When we arrived in Padstow we knew we would have to wait for a few days so that the tide would be at the correct state to enable us to leave the river and cross the bar in daylight. Our original intention was to leave Padstow and sail the 30 or so miles along the coast to St Ives and then use that as a starting point to round Lands End and on to the south Cornish coast. However a phone call to the HM at St Ives soon put a stop to that idea. His comment was that even local boats couldn’t get in and out of the harbour because of the large swell and build up of surf and it was looking as if this would carry on for the rest of the week! So it was back to the tide tables and charts! We eventually agreed that Sunday at 4am would be light enough for us to see our way along the river and over the bar and would give us enough time to reach Cape Cornwall with a favourable tide; so we became Padstow tourists for a week! The weather was beautiful and our berth in the centre of the town c...