Sail To Anywhere ...

Channel Islands 2010 - Alderney and home

2010-08-15T10:26:00.008+01:00

Sadly it was all too soon for our last port of call “abroad” – a quick stop in Braye harbour in Alderney. Where we went for some chips from the legendary harbour chippy . The locals were queuing before it opened – mind you it is quite quiet in Alderney so a chip shop is a big thing !

On the final Saturday morning of our two weeks we stuck out for home at a not to early for once 08:00. We were headed for the Bembridge end of the Isle of Wight as tides didn’t serve us well for the closer Needles entrance. Really light winds meant it was cruising chute time. Even with this for a couple of hours we only made about 4 knots through the water and I was considering having to give up when the wind picked up just enough and we started going for it. Both shipping lanes were crossed with cruising chute up and then wind built up more, and then a little more. And then it really was too much. The log was reading a bit faulty after me having to unclog some Portbail sand earlier in the trip but we were still going pretty fast when it briefly touched 20.1 knots. We actually had “rooster tails” from the interference of the wash from the two hulls. I managed to catch a quick glance at the GPS at one point which showed 14 knots but on some of the surfs we were definitely quicker than that.

This was of course completely imprudent and unseamanlike – but great fun !

I needed the lee of the Isle of Wight before I could attempt to get the chute back in the sock. It was a struggle but we found just enough quiet water and shelter from the wind to get everything down and packed away before we unfurled the Genoa and took off again.

With such a late start, and initially slow progress we took about 12.5 hours before we made Portsmouth and stopped there for the night as my home pontoon in Southampton was dry until midnight. A nifty bit of parking (if I do say so myself) and we were tied up safely for the night and headed for much welcomed showers.

It was dodging Cowes week racers the next day on the way back round to Calshot and up Southampton water and tied up on our home pontoon.

With some 330+ miles (it’s about that on the chart and the log went haywire after Portbail so in reality it would have been much more) it was all in all a cracking trip. The crew weren’t even sick at all on the way back and we certainly did get a lot of sailing – the engine was hardly used apart from entering and leaving harbours/anchorages. We never used the generator once as the Solar Panels kept up with the fridge although we did plug in to electricity at both Cherbourg, St Aubin and Portsmouth. Add to that that the fact that we only paid at for two nights in Cherbourg, one night in both Portsmouth and Alderney and a donation in Herm and it was a cheap trip too.

The Iphone was great - as well as screenshot of the navigation as we went round I was able to download the entire route to Google Maps so easily - so here it is

View Larger Map

Next year I think it’s time to explore the Eastern side of the Cotentin peninsular.

Unless I win the lottery and set of for blue water before then…

Channel Islands 2010 - Sark - Derrible

2010-08-15T09:57:00.004+01:00

After a couple of days at Portbail we made tracks back to Sark. We ran out of wind towards the end and had to motor the last bit before arriving at Derrible Bay. We found a sweet spot to Anchor right inside the bay and using our minimal draft tucked in front of everyone else. I really had the anchoring cracked with me just being able to stand up with my feet on the bottom at low water at the stern and still just missing the rocks.

We had a swim around the bay off the back of Talia in this gorgeous setting and bumped in to Cedric and Jane who were on a monohull anchored just behind us whilst swimming. We ended up splitting the night between our cockpit and their saloon imbibing generously in both and needless to say everything was quite fuzzy the next morning. Anna experienced the rocking of a monohull and was pleased to return to the gently swaying Talia. I was just pleased not to fall out the dingy on the way back.

Channel Islands 2010 - Portbail

2010-08-15T09:53:00.004+01:00

We had the tide times cracked at Portbail and managed (sans outboard) to get to town across “the lake” with the tide, have dinner, and then the tide swept us back towards the patiently waiting Talia at anchor. Finding anything not containing meat in French Restaurants for the vegetarian crew proved a much bigger challenge! At anchor I was within 15 feet of the “deep flat bit” but managed instead to dry out at a slight angle but not enough to be bothered to move. We saw a large fin keeled yacht which appears to have been abandoned – it didn’t float even at HW

Channels Islands 2010 - Jersey to France

2010-08-15T09:45:00.003+01:00

After Jersey it was destination

France

again – a quick stop off at St Catherine’s Breakwater to get the high tide timing right to get into Portbail and we had a smooth journey, sunshine, radio playing gently wafting along at a 3/4 knots. Anchor down in the sand outside the inner harbour in time for dinner and a glass of wine

Channel Islands 20010 - St Aubin

2010-08-15T09:24:00.006+01:00

St Aubin was, as ever, gorgeous and we enjoyed some fabulous food – most noticeably at “the Salty Dog” which served the best lobster I have ever had. We were only just able to sneak in to the harbour as it was quite busy and there were some scaffolding in place as they were apparently repaired the harbour wall. We stayed for several days and attempted to work off our lovely food with what turned out to be a cycle all the way round Jersey. This turned out to be a long way at over 40 miles with some not inconsiderable coastal hills but was satisfying nonetheless. On the last night before we left we met up with Aleck and Chris from Dragonslayer – at 45 foot the Catalac dwarfed poor little Talia. We enjoyed wine and nibble in their saloon – it was so big it was difficult to know where to sit!

One day…

(but as they said they still passage plan at 5 knots – for a 45 footer I don’t think it will be a Catalac – I passage plan at 5 knots and I am only 33 feet but that’s why the accommodation is so big – you pays your money and takes your choice)

Channel Islands 2010 - Herm to Jersey

2010-08-15T09:09:00.004+01:00

We went straight from Herm to Jersey and had a cracking sail to St Helier where I picked up some fuel and the quickly left again and made for the much nicer St Aubin- drying in soft mud against the harbour wall. Thanking yet again that I had a vessel that can dry out and thus get to all the nice spots rather than overcrowded, overpriced marina “car parks”.

Channel Islands 2010 - Herm

2010-08-11T20:52:00.006+01:00

We dried out on the beach at the main harbour in Herm for a couple of days and enjoyed the sunshine. I feel like I have mastered picking up the ground chains now having been here before. It is a delightful spot. I did have a BBQ where I tried very hard to set fire to the boat but luckily failed. (Even though the outboard petrol was contaminated it still lit…)One night there was a somewhat incongruous “ompah band” on at the local pub. It really would have been nicer if they hadn’t been there !

Channels Islands 2010 - Cherbourg to Sark

2010-08-11T20:40:00.006+01:00

It was rest and recuperation for a couple of days in Cherbourg before a quiet passage to Sark. The wind died just off the Cap de La Hague and we motored to Sark. We took one of the buoys off Sark at Havre Gosselin as it’s such a beautiful spot but this was probably a mistake with the swell rolling round quite badly. A quick jaunt on Sark the next day and as everything was covered in fog/sea mist we escaped to the much sunnier Herm.

Channel Islands 2010 - Newton Creek to Cherbourg

2010-08-11T20:34:00.004+01:00

So on our Friday night departure we saw a good breeze and a quick beat to Newtown Creek. An early night and an early start for we were up at 05:30. Well when I say “we” I mean me. The Crew decided it was still the middle of the night and stayed in bed. This turned out to be a fatal error for two reasons

1. They missed a glorious sunrise just outside Newtown Creek

2. In not getting up, sea sickness tablets were not consumed early enough and this had fish feeding consequences later on in Note to self always remember the “North Channel” in any serious weather.

No harm done – we sailed all the way but the winds did go round to the NW and we ended up hard on the wind and being effectively single handed (due to Crew fish feeding and a broken Autopilot) I perhaps wasn’t as hot at the Navigation as I should have been but was deliberately up tide so got swept in to Cherbourg. But this did mean we had an interesting experience nearly crossing a “Zone Interdit/Explosifs Immerges” zone on the chart. My French was good enough to know we shouldn’t be there and we tacked clear.

The crew were particularly inventive in the catering depart whilst in Cherbourg finding Rosemary in the bushes in the park outside the marina and adding to a Camembert to make a tasty starter one night. The gods compensated though, by killing the outboard when I refuelled with what must have been some contaminated petrol. Rowing was the order of the day for the rest of the trip.

Louis the nephew went sailing

2010-07-16T09:28:00.005+01:00

A quick jaunt up to the Folly last weekend with my Brother and nephew on board - swelteringly hot meant it was more like the med than the Solent and we even went swimming anchored of Osborne Bay.

Getting all packed up today and ready for the off tomorrow for a two week trip to the France and the Channel Islands - even managed to plot a route on the phone and upload it here

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=us&geocode=&q=http://wa01.navionicsmobile.com:8080/up/up/540766010/1279112176036Marker.kmz/newdoc.kml&ie=UTF8

Chris, John, Nic, Vic and Lois in the Solent

2010-07-04T19:06:00.003+01:00

So after the drama of the Round the Island Race it was great to have an easy weekend's cruising to Lymington. We even managed to fluff up picking up the mooring but a friendly shove from the Harbourmaster's RIB saw us right. I had to include a separate photo of "Gorgeous John"- just for Lois to oggle over. A lovely cruise back with the big chute up and I even had enough crew to video gybing the chute just of Calshot spit - fairly neatly done I would like to think!

Round the Island Race 2010

2010-06-22T18:59:00.012+01:00

So the Round the Island (Isle of Wight) race was a fantastic experience. A really early start last Saturday - up at 04:00 for a gun on the start line of 05:10

My crew were:

Carl - my Brother who had never set foot on this boat before
Jon and Dave - who had both been on my boat once before and never raced although Jon has just brought his own dinghy
Antonia - who was the star of the day and has raced J109's fairly competitively before and was a massive help with Race tactics and the general approach for the day.

And me, a fair bit of cruising experience but have only raced twice before (both the RTI race in two different boats - both of which times we retired due to lack of wind)

And Talia, a loaded up cruising boat - I did take the generator and a spare anchor off but we had enough water to last until Sunday, bacon and sausage butties to keep us going and enough beer and wine for all.

We had an amusing incident pre-start - we were on Sailing on starboard waiting for the start when a old Gaffer started closing on a port (give way) tack. We peered at them and the politely shouted "starboard" in case they were confused and got the answer "we are a gaffer and can't manoeuvre easily".

So we tacked to avoid the crash.

I am not quite sure what they were planning to do in the next 10 hours of racing with the 1800 boats !

But this didn't put us off and was actually the worse "incident" of the day.

After that we got quite a good start, went over the line not long after the gun and with Main and Genoa - as soon as we were over the line we got the chute ready to deploy and for once it popped out first time.

We did take the Needles very wide but seemed to be overtaking lots of inshore vessels who seemed to fall into a wind hole. Round the back of the Island we were also quite far out and benefited from the some clean wind but probably had more adverse tide than most.
The wind got up and this point and we had a fun time getting our cruising chute down - we saw at least three blown spinnakers to prove the point.

The taking round the East side of the Island took it's toll with us loosing time to most mono's who pointed higher but the winds held and we picked up good speed again coming back to Cowes.

We passed over the line at 15:53:27 with an elapsed time of 10:43:27.

We soon got the beers out regardless of where we had came in the pecking order but were surprised later to find out we came 6th in our class - out of 9 finishers in our class.

The official result link is here

http://www.roundtheisland.org.uk/web/code/php/main_c.php?page=results2010&section=live&map=rir10&style=std&ui=rir2&override=&classrequest=510&submit=Go

When I later inspected the results table I was even more pleased without result - of the 5 catamarans in our class who beat there were:

Cabrio - was skippered by it's builder who is the manufacture of of one of the biggest catamarans ranges in Europe - Broadblue Catamarans - the crew were two directors of one of the biggest agents selling multihulls in the UK - one of which was also and RYA instructor!

Coco De Mer - a 66 foot carbon fibre Gunboat worth 3 million dollars - whilst it's true they had a handicap system I reckon they had spent a little more than me on new sails and lines than me !

Mailys - whose skipper was a former Former "C-Class World Sailing Speed Record holder" and has done the race with the same crew since 1994

Catmando - who won this class last year !

Elixir I don't know much about but as a Prout Quest 34 we should have been competitive with - we were within a couple of hundred yards off St Catherine's but he just seemed to be able to point in a way we couldn't - I would be intrigued to see how he set his Genoa. But fair play he must have sailed very well indeed - he beat us by 25 minutes - a target for next year.

So in summary I felt pretty good in coming sixth

And probably more importantly nobody got seriously hurt, no-one hit us and we didn't hit anybody and we got home before dark.

And everyone is up for doing it next year.

The Isle of Wight Festival

2010-06-22T18:37:00.008+01:00

So I took Talia to the Isle of Wight Music Festival - we had myself, Anna, Barry, Andy,
Amy, Lee and another Amy onboard.

Seven on board made it pretty busy buy we got visited by Karen, Sarah and Caroline
during the weekend as they were staying on the camp site which made us busier still.

Have the catamaran in the marina was definitely preferable do staying on the rather
smelly Campsite.

The gigs were fantastic - especially Pink and Paul McCartney but as this is a sailing
blog I won't go into more detail here.

It was brilliant to be able to be a so many gigs and walk back to the boat for as
decent night sleep. And decent showers.

The sailing itself was sadly quite uneventful and we motored a lot the way there and back.

Someone, somewhere, not part of my party seemed to have forgotten their boat and instead slept of a big night on the pontoon !

2nd May Bank Holiday Weekend

2010-06-22T18:30:00.003+01:00

OK so way behind with posting - but we did pop out for the second Bank Holiday Weekend. Gales kept us in port on the Saturday but we made it to Lymington on the Sunday.

Carl, Nic and Ben go to Portsmouth

2010-05-17T18:39:00.003+01:00

So a slow start, and even slower winds on Saturday meant we went with the wind and headed for Portsmouth. At one point with cruising chute amateurishly and incorrectly deployed the winds did pick up and Ben was nearly lifted of the deck when trying to help me keep the tack on the boat !

We got it all in back in the sock in the end but I was contemplating the knife to cut things free.

Much stronger winds on Sunday saw us whizzing back at over 8 knots a one point.

Ant, Gary, Nikki, & Barry go to Poole

2010-05-06T18:47:00.004+01:00

Some strong winds over the bank holiday which meant we made some cracking time and stopped off at Lymington where Barry climbed the mast for no particular reason

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/video/video.php?v=431740523744&ref=mf

We made it so Poole in record time, often hitting 8/9 and even 10 knots with the NE wind behind us. And then promptly ran out of Gas with all the shops shut. 20 quid in a taxi and we could then make a cup of tea - expensive tea that.

Some of the poor crew were so tired they needed a little nap...

First trip of the season

2010-04-09T15:19:00.010+01:00

So only a short one over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend - to get the newly wet boat and the just about to be wet Crew used to everything. Portsmouth, the Folly on the Isle of Wight and home.

Good points - Genny and Mainsail with new stack pack went on a treat and look great - photos coming soon. Crew weren't sick.

Bad points got hit when we were tied up on Portsmouth by a numpty who couldn't steer his boat and a bit of wind - insurance claim progressing.

;-(

In she goes...

2010-04-09T14:07:00.013+01:00

So I have only just caught up with photos from the launch this year - the week before Easter. All went smooth enough - apart from having no engine cooling water flow which resulted in a tow to her berth and then some attentions from a mechanic to cut half my cooling water hose off ! All fixed now. At least she is in and safe or so I thought...

Broken awning hooks

2010-03-22T18:33:00.002Z

So among the many jobs I need to complete is to replace some broken hooks from the cockpit cover support. Not interesting I agree but the photos here will help me fix the supports.

Anchored in Newtown Creek over the weekend...

2009-09-01T17:08:00.001+01:00

Midsummer Energy Panels Showcase

2009-08-26T14:36:00.002+01:00

So back in the Summer I sent a link to my blog off to the nice folks at Midsummer Energy. They spotted a nice photo of their panels and asked if they could add me to their "Showcase" gallery. I had no problems and so they have added me in. Here is the link

Liz, Antonia, Gary, Ian and Belinda go to the Folly

2009-08-23T21:58:00.006+01:00

A big gang on board and light winds meant we only made it to the Folly, on the Medina river on the Isle of Wight - but with some rare cracking sunshine in an English Summer. Sailed all the way home again.

Maintenance - refurbished woodwork

2009-08-09T12:44:00.003+01:00

So a weekend off from sailing and I refurbished the teak cockpit grill. Fixed a few screws and nailed the loose "planks". So here is the before and after shots of several hours of sanding and painting. It seems a shame to put it back so people can just tread on it now !

Near misses during Cowes week

2009-08-03T15:42:00.004+01:00

Another cracking trip, Lymington again (what can I say the mooring is easy and Kings Head always does good food) this time with Dave, John and Lois.

Saturday was long beat all the way both up Southampton water AND along the Solent as the wind shifted. The fact that the Solent was packed due to Cowes week made things a little interesting. Plenty of near misses, all perfectly timed of course. We did our best to avoid racing fleets but the Solent was packed. A light wind behind us made us miss the midday tide on the way back on Sunday.

But with blue sky's we and sunshine weren't very bothered and anchored up in Osbourne bay for a late lunch. After sailing off the anchor (including some nifty last minute sailing backwards by backing the main to avoid running out of water) we sailed all the way home.

A cracking reach at about 7.5 knots all the way from Osbourne bay to the end of Southampton water. We ghosted back down the River Itchen and made it to within 200 feet of our pontoon before switching on the engine. We knew we didn't have enough water anyway to get back on so were in no rush. When we did get back there we found a monohull stuck in the approach channel but he soon lifted off and we got in 3.5 hours before high water.

Top crew, top weekend, top sailing. The sailing really brought a smile to my face. But very tired at work now !

PS Why didn't I take any photos on Sunday when it was lovely and sunny !

Dave has now supplied a few more photos : http://www.dastokes.f2s.com/photo_page_frame.php?Topic=./Sailing%202009

Famous at last... not !

2009-07-31T11:32:00.003+01:00

So I am now officially in the National media scrum. After emailing the YM news editor about a landowner in Poole harbour trying to stop people landing on the foreshore of Long Island which isn't even owned by them. It is owned by the Crown Estate. The article really isn't very clear and certainly doesn't make the point that it *is* legal to land on the foreshore. But they got my age right !

I guess that's journalism for you.

The article is on page 11 of August's Yachting Monthly. I have reproduced a snapshot here so as to preserve my fame !

Channel Islands Holiday - Conclusion

2009-07-24T16:45:00.008+01:00

On this trip the solar panels were a great success - 4 Unisolar/Spectraflex 32 Watt flexible panels from Midsumer Energy if anyone is interested.

These allowed us independence from the generator. Whilst our Honda genny is very quiet it is a nuisance and faff to set up and run. We rigged the temporary panels at the beginning of the trip and left them plugged into the Morningstar Regulator for three weeks. Result - batteries topped up - we can sail in the day with autohelm and fridge on and still be charging. 3 days at anchor several times and the engine was never started and we still kept up with our needs. They work surprisingly well even in dull conditions and with them placed over our cockpit cover we never move them. Zero effort - I like that ! We do have a separate solar powered "shed light" which does for a lot of our cabin light needs rather than using the main lights - but of course it wasn't dark until 9:00 PM or later anyway. Our anchor light is also independant and solar powered. Our fridge is still a nightmare and sucks up loads of juice - 40 Amp Hours every 24 hours just by itself. Its on the (long) list of items to replace/fix...

We were in "holiday mode" rather than "liveaboard/voyage" mode as we both had jobs to go straight back to so within reason I didn't care what we spent. (Hence a Lobster thermidor in St Aubin) but even when money isn't the issue as we prefer "out of the way" spots instead of plastic marinas, we didn't spend that much. I didn't even count food/restaurant expenditure but fuel and mooring was as follows.

Lymington 1 night - £14

Alderney (Way out) 2 nights- £28

Sark Buoy- we stayed three nights but they only collected for two - £30

Herm was a voluntary donation for the season. I gave £10 for three nights including royal visit!

Alderney (Way back) 1 night - £14

Yarmouth 1 night £6

Total £102 for 20 nights away - an average of just over a fiver a night.

We picked up water in Peter Port but the dory man wasn't bothered about charging us. We picked up an Anchor on the St Helier waiting pontoon and the man didn't charge us but wanted to if we hadn't been going soonish.

Everywhere else was free. We didn't buy any petrol as the Solar panels worked so well and we didn't dinghy far.

We did buy some diesel in Alderney and back in Southampton to top ourselves up again- 27 litres for £21.33 in Southampton and £16.27 in Alderney - Total of £37.60

We probably had a little more diesel on the way out than when we had topped up on the way back - but not much.

Grand total of £37.60 + £102 = £139.60

This conveniently ignores a grand on solar panels, another grand on a new main etc etc ;-)

Best "new to us" harbour was definitely St Aubin - we really like it, some fab restaurants. Tamsyn still really likes Herm. The Ecrehous were definitely a unique experience.

Dodgiest moment had to be coming out through the breakers at Portbail with only just enough water to get out.

Some good sailing - especially with the new main back across the channel when we were hitting 7.5 knots through the water even without any surfing ! (before we reefed ;-) )

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 13 - Homeward bound

2009-07-24T16:28:00.005+01:00

We left Portbail in some "interesting" weather - there were breakers either side of the entrance channel and we were the first boat out of the harbour. With hindsight we were pushing it a little but knew we had to grab as much Northerly tide as possible. Once clear of the shoal, things settled down and we very nearly made it to Alderney. I knew it was going to be tight and we lost the tide as we entered the "Swinge". A very turbulent tidal channel between Alderney and Burhou - it was running so fast South that even with the engine on full revs we were barely making any ground. Eventually we clawed our way of the channel and made it back behind the breakwater for a quiet night. With some nasty depressions on the way we realised we needed to make a run for it the next day back to the Solent. We got some diesel in cans as soon as the chandlery was open (we were a bit low on fuel for a channel crossing) and went for it. We sailed nearly the whole way and made it back so quickly we arrived early for the tidal gate at Hurst Narrows - the en trace back into the Solent and so were once again motoring against the tide. But only for the very last bit of what was in general a very fast passage. We left at 10:00 in the morning and were all tied up in Yarmouth by 21:00. Even better the next day I went to pay my dues and due to a midweek offer week offer we were only charged £6.00 - result !

Got some nice shots of rainbows just South of the Isle of Wight on the channel crossing and once back in Southampton water I remembered exactly how busy a commercial port is - a bit of a shock after Alderney/Herm/Portbail etc !

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 12 - France - Portbail

2009-07-24T16:16:00.005+01:00

We had been to the lovely drying harbour of Portbail before in our last boat. We once again had some lovely meals at the "Fisherman's Rest".

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 11 Écréhous

2009-07-24T15:02:00.005+01:00

We left St. Aubin with the tide and had plans to sail south and go into St. Germain Sur Ay. This was a VERY drying harbour and by the time we got there - about 10 miles from St. Aubin - all the water had well and truly gone. Anchoring off the entrance channel looked non existent and I was worried about being neaped so instead we sailed back North and investigated the Ecrehous - a small bunch of rocks which are nearly covered at high water about 6 miles North East of Jersey. We anchored initially but when the one and only visitors buoy became free we nabbed it. At lower water it dries (again you see what I said) at High water it is like being anchored in the middle of the channel. I found it a fascinating place and make no excuse for the amount of photos. Tamsyn however thought it was "just a bunch of rocks" and never went ashore! We used a bit of quiet time to replace the very worn Spinnaker Halyard - which also gave me an excuse to climb halfway up the mast and take a shot of Talia below. It was particularly nice when a seal kept swimming round the boat - I struggled to get a decent photo though. On the way out we spotted dolphins but I was too busy dodging rocks to get any photos at all.

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 10 Jersey - Cycling

2009-07-24T14:50:00.006+01:00

So we hired bikes in St Aubin and headed out to St Ouen and then came back the long way round via St Helier.

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 9 Jersey - St Aubin around & about

2009-07-24T12:48:00.007+01:00

We stayed in St Aubin for a few days and walked round the local area across the penisular and into St Brelades bay. We also walked out to the old fort guarding the harbour - where we met a seagull eating a crab !

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 8 Jersey - St Aubin Harbour

2009-07-24T12:23:00.008+01:00

So we left Herm as soon as the tide would allow and had a cracking Sail all the way to Jersey. We went into St Helier and tide up on the waiting pontoon. We needed to collect a replacement "Spade" anchor from Blue Water supplies. Our old Aluminium had a bent shank. We picked up a new steel one. Sadly Tamsyn can hardly lift it but I am sure some with some weight training she will be fine!

We don't really like St Helier so instead we nipped off to St Aubin, a new harbour for us. What a delight, a really nice place. Nice well protected harbour, some lovely restaurants and free too ! And drying of course - we always find the "nice" places are drying both in the Solent and the Channel Islands/Brittany. Living here I could never have a fin keel but I am glad everyone else does as it keeps these places quiet for us !

The harbour wall also gave me a good chance to take a good shot of how our solar panels are arranged. Incidentally the Solar panels were a great success. We never plugged into power for the whole 3 weeks holiday and only ran the generator once - and even then only to run the laptop.

One of the restaurants we went to was apparently where a lot of Bergerac was filmed. I had a lobster Thermidor - but it was really Lobster, cheese and mushrooms - quite nice but not really Thermidor !

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 7 Herm Royal visit

2009-07-24T10:43:00.010+01:00

So I have as much sympathy for the Royal family as a fish requires toothpaste but it was nice of them to drop by and was entertaining ! We didn't know about this in advance - the first thing we knew was when we saw people picking up the tiniest pieces of litter. As it was raining we didn't even get off the boat - all these photos were taken from our cockpit.

My ignorance of the Royals is such that I took a photo of anyone who looked smart in a suit and it was only afterwards that I realised I had actually managed to take some of the Wessex's.

Commentary on the movies courtesy of BBC Radio Guernsey. We were hooked ;-) We particularly liked the reference to the "media pack". As far as we could see this was one girl with long wet hair and a fluffy microphone !

Another classic was "Sophie is wearing ... reasonably flat shoes.."

That's all right then we can rest easy in our beds tonight. "The BBC ... due to the unique way we are funded..."

;-)

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 6 around Herm

2009-07-24T10:31:00.006+01:00

Once the mobo's had gone (they all went later on Sunday) we had the harbour to ourselves and moved up the beach to a more sheltered spot. We walked round the gorgeous island.

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 5 - Herm Sunday night

2009-07-24T10:19:00.003+01:00

So we knew it was a mistake to go to Herm at the weekend. It's full of local mobos nipping over for a Sunday lunch or a barbie on the beach - it's a tiny little harbour so there would be no room. BUT by this point we had really got fed up of the swell in Havelet bay. So I figured if we went over for the Sunday midday tide we everyone else would be leaving - not so it was packed as the photos show. We motored in, had a look round, motored out, too a buoy outside, went back in the dinghy to see if there was space, came back and decided we might need to anchor elsewhere, motored over to Rosiere steps, didn't like the look of that, came back to another buoy outside but decided we couldn't ground on that and were just about to leave completely when one boat left so we snuck in and took the bouy. Sorted. In a most delightful spot.

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 4 - Guernsey

2009-07-22T19:43:00.004+01:00

We hoped the short crossing from Sark to Guernsey - stopped very briefly in Peter Port main harbour to pick up some water and then anchored in Havelet Bay next door. It was nice enough but a bit rolly with low swell finding it's way right in the bay. We wandered round Peter Port, had a lovely meal at Dix Neuf - always one of our favourite places, stocked up at M&S and Tamsyn even got her hair cut. Then after a couple of nights it was on to Herm.

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 3 - Sark

2009-07-21T20:11:00.008+01:00

A quick crossing from Alderney to Sark - started with a cracking sail, then cruising chute then motoring in the murk. Decided to shoot through the Gouilet passage a too a buoy at Greve De Lecq. Another 15 quid a night job but they only caught us for 2 out of the 3 nights ! Met Cliff and Karen on "Zoom" at the landing stpes and imbibed many a glass onboard Talia followed by many a cup of tea the next day on Zoom.

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 2 - Alderney

2009-07-21T19:59:00.003+01:00

Stayed in Alderney for a couple of nights - paying £15 a night for a Harbour Master's buoy as we were too lazy to Anchor. Went for a wander round the island. There were some lovely tall ships in the harbour. And found a bizarre carved Puffin on the far side of the Island. We passed a ganet colony on the way out which stank something cronic of guano.

Channel Islands Holiday - Part 1 - Crossing from Lymington

2009-07-21T19:51:00.002+01:00

Left on the 27th June - quick motor to Lymington.

Up Early o the 28th - 04:45 to catch the sunrise in Lymington before hitting fog off the Needles.

Steered 145 degress for Alderney - arrived 19:00. Pretty uneventfull crossing really. Sailed a lot of it but had to motor towards the end as the wind died.

Solar Powered !

2009-06-14T14:48:00.002+01:00

So we are now solar powered ! The regulator and junction box are installed. We laid out just one panel (they are supposed to be 32W) and straight away got a 2.2 Amp charge. The fridge draws only 1.7 Amps so we are already in positive territory. We have four panels overall and as they are all portable/stow able we will play around with the best places to site the on our upcoming holiday.

Tamsyn also took a quick jaunt up the mast to measure our luff length to get a new mainsail cut as the last one didn't fit !

Ian, Belinda, Eammon, and Antonia trip to Lymington

2009-06-09T11:57:00.003+01:00

So quite a full ship set off on Saturday. Ian, Belinda, Eamonn and Antonia were all on board. The first *massive* disappointment came when we hoisted the mainsail. Or rather failed to. It doesn't fit ! We thought it was a bit big in the stackpack but I couldn't believe that when I got the sail all the way to the top that we still had 2/3 feet of sail left ! Not very good at all. Discussion with supplier ongoing...

With big head winds and a duff main we motored against some pretty fierce head winds up Southampton water - but once we turned the corner at Calshot we flew to Newtown Creek for lunch. Multiple slices of home baked cake kept the spirits up in lumpy conditions. Much tea was drunk. A short sail back across the Solent and an excellent (if I do say so myself) bit of parking and we were set for the night. So many crew really helps picking up fore and aft buoys.

The rain came down over night to wash of the salt of but dried up in the morning and with the winds switching back to the SW we sailed all the way home.

A new mainsail

2009-05-31T10:23:00.002+01:00

So at great expense we have brought a new mainsail. The old one was 20 years old and the new one has 3/4 length battens - so we will see if we acutally get any performance difference. At least it will look smart ! The fitting went fairly smoothly until we found one of the slides was the wrong size and had to file it down. The new sail also exposed how bad the sail cover is. I will put new one of those on the long list of things to do/but/get mended !

Bembridge Beach...

2009-05-28T18:32:00.006+01:00

So we took off early and came back late for an extended Bank Holiday weekend.

First stop was Priory Bay - a bit bumpier than we expected but it was a good chance to beach the boat and scrub off the anti-foul. One of the few disadvantages of a Catamaran is the amount of hull to scrub!

Then on to Bembridge beach where we didn't realise but a "Catamaran Cruising Association" meeting was taken place. We got talking and ended up going to Brading Haven Yacht Club with them for the evening.

We were very nearly "parked" upon by not club cat driving up the beach, missing us by a few inches and then trying to break our Anchor chain with their prop. Perhaps unsurprisingly she was for sale...

Then on Monday back to the Folly to for a quite anchor up. We tried out our new Anchor Ball/Light arrangement.

When we finally got back to our pontoon we spied some ducks fast asleep on someone else's sugar scoop.

Weekend trip to East Head in Chichester with the Boys

2009-05-12T21:34:00.004+01:00

Eamonn, Carl and Andrew crewed for the weekend. We sailed all the way up Southampton water on Saturday morning before the wind died a bit. But after many tangles we got the cruising chute up and held it all the way to Chichester entrance. We anchored at East Head and after quelling a mutiny due to us not going ashore to the pub we settled in for a few beers. An early start and light winds saw us motoring to start home on Sunday but the breeze soon filled in and we sailed to past the Hamble before the wind died again.

A cracking weekend by all. Fantastically peaceful at East Head on Saturday night.

Quick trip to Lymington last weekend

2009-05-06T22:09:00.004+01:00

First time mooring the cat on fore and aft buoys. Not to difficult really with the solid foredeck but appreciated being on the outside. The 2009 "Pippin's lawn" was unveiled and tested and Pippin started digging on some dirty puddles...

Parked a bit close methinks

2009-04-18T14:27:00.005+01:00

So we are out for our first trip of the Season - a quiet anchor opposite Island Harbour on the Isle of Wight.

Next minute an eighty foot barge arrives - a pretty boat I will grant you but parked a little close I thought. The plonker, sorry skipper thought this was fine.

We were overjoyed when he told us he had a "Hen Do" onboard and had to go below to sort out his generator to power the hair dryers.

If you want to charter her for your next Hen do you can find out more at here http://www.4charter.co.uk/barges/alice.php but perhaps you can persuade him not to anchor quite so close next time ;-)

Staying connected

2009-02-06T17:23:00.010Z

So on the cruise last year how did we stay connected ?

Well firstly we got power for our laptop with our impressively quiet Honda Generator- an EU10. Obviously it was also charging the batteries at the same time.

The quietest Genny I have heard and it has a neat switch to turn down the revs when not much power is being drawn. We are still careful/considerate when we use it but it would rarely disturb anyone.

Where there were Wifi signals were available we used our Repeatit Long Range Antenna. Whilst it can be permanently mounted we couldn't see how this was going to work when sailing so we mostly just balanced it on the roof when in an Anchorage.

We also had a 3G dongle. Sometimes there was Wifi and no 3G and sometime the reverse so to stay in touch it was good to have both.

Although the Repeatit is directional this rarely posed too much of a problem and we regularly picked up usable signals over a third of mile away.

Wifi, the law and boats...

2009-02-06T11:01:00.003Z

Prompted by some recent posts on ybw forum I ended up wasting far too much time writing the following and thought I would preserve it here for prosperity.

Using someone else’s WiFi without permission is of course illegal (in the UK if not elsewhere) and I of course could not condone or recommend such behavior. We of course never did this ourselves. I do wonder how the conversation would go though ...

Caller "Hello, is that Fuddlingtonshire Police?"

Plod "Yes Sir, Is there a crime in progress that you wish to report?"

Caller "Yes I would like to report a transgression of the 2003 Communications Act and possibly unauthorized access to computer material that is summary offense under Section 1 of the 1990 Computer Misuse Act"

Plod "Er wot? Sir"

Caller "Someone is stealing Wifi"

Plod "Ah now I understand the gravity of the situation Sir"

(Overhead calling to colleagues in the background "Fred - stop all work on that Rape case, Bill I know you were going to raid that Crack house in Fuddlington high street this afternoon but something has come up. Bring the Cortina round the front")

Plod "So what is the address of the person whose Wifi is being stolen"

Caller "I don't know, I can just see an Antenna that must be picking up something"

Plod "So the person whose Wifi that is being stolen hasn't complained to you ?"

Caller "No, they are probably out and don't even know the crime is taking place"

Plod "Right so we don't actually know who it is being stolen from. What about who is doing the stealing. What is their address ?"

Caller "They don't have one."

Plod "Wot ? Are you trying to wind me up Sonny?"

Caller "No it's on a boat you see, anchored out in Big Bay"

Plod "Right I see. What does this boat look like ?"

Caller "It's got a mast and a white hull."

Plod "Look Sonny I am warning you, one more of these and the boys will be round to inspect the tread on your tyres ...”

Caller "No I am serious officer"

Plod ”OK. How many boats are there in Big Bay with masts and white hulls ?"

Caller "Er about 30 BUT this one is on a bearing of 034 degrees taken from the bus stop in Fisherman’s lane - about 300m out"

Plod "Right that's it we have him banged to rights, we'll get the Blues and Twos going on the Cortina....Once we have phoned up Division and asked if he can borrow their Rib - we don't have one in Fuddlington you see. And of course we are not trained for Maritime operations so there will have to be a Risk Assessment but once we have the Rib, the trained maritime staff and the assessment complete his collar is as good as felt. Oh and there isn't a tow bar on the Cortina either but we will get one fitted."

Caller "I am relieved to hear that."

Plod "Can I just ask a question can you actually see the Antenna being used. Do you actually know a signal is being stolen ?"

Caller "Well no I can't actually see someone inside the yacht actually using it. I suppose I couldn't sit there in court and testify to that."

Plod "OK Sir but considering the gravity we will of course investigate anyway. One more question. If the Yacht is out in Big Bay how come you noticed the Antenna ?”

Caller "Ah well as part of being a responsible citizen I sweep the Bay on the hour with my Binos to look for any potential infringements of the 2003 Communications Act"

Plod "I see - don't get our much do you Sir?"

Caller " It is difficult to fit in a social life with the hourly sweep you see..."

Plod "Yes of course Sir I understand. Just let me confirm the facts of this case. You want us to investigate someone on a yacht (in the bay on a bearing of 034 degrees taken from the bus stop in Fisherman’s lane - about 300m out with a white hull) who may, if the device is switched on which you can’t see, be stealing a signal from someone whose identity and location you do not know?"

Caller “Yes”

Plod “Well thank you for your report we will get on to this as a top priority and a matter of urgency.”

(Puts phone down)

Plod "Fred, put the kettle on will you - I fancy a brew..."

Hypoid or EP Gear Oil ?

2008-11-04T09:53:00.002Z

It has taken me ages to find "Hypoid" gear oil as specified for the Transmission Oil for our Sillette drive leg. I finally came across this very old archived bit of the net with this definition.

"Hypoid" is not really a question of oil, so much as a question of

gearcutting. Old (1920's) rear axles used straight bevel gears to form

the crownwheel and pinion. These had two disadvantage, the pinion

shaft meets the crownwheel on its central axis, and the straight cut

gears are noisy. By using a more complex "hypoid" gear tooth shape (if

you look at a pinion, the teeth appear twisted) these problems can be

addressed. The more gradual engagement of the teeth along their length

reduces noise. By careful design of the geometry the pinion can be

made to mesh _below_ the axis of the crownwheel. As the centre height

of the crownwheel is fixed by the wheel height, this allows the

propshaft to be lowered relative to the car body, giving a clearer

floorpan and lower centre of gravity for better cornering. Hypoid

bevels are now universal in this application.

Because of the sliding contact that hypoid gears make, their

hydrodynamic contact pressure is higher. To be suitable for use with

hypoid gears, a lubricant must be capable of resisting high pressures.

Oils with "EP" ratings (Extreme Pressure) such as EP90 are required.

Some brands describe themselves as "hypoid" instead, a term which is

synonymous with EP. GL-5 is a formal API standard for this type of oil

(comparable to MIL-L-2105B/C/D)

So thats that resolved then - you can sleep easily now ! Thought I had better preserve this bit of the net 'cos is came from "74551.2327@CompuServe.COM" - somehow I doubt that email address still exists !

Bonjor pour bateaux Physalie

2008-11-03T15:28:00.003Z

Back in August when we were anchored of Green Bay on Bryher we "rescued" a charming French couple. All the boats regularly dried out as the tide went out a long way. Even when it was "dry" we got into the habit of dragging the dinghy up the beach but then invariably dragged it back down when we arrived back at our early boat after a walk ashore.

But Philippe and Chantal, the engaging French couple onboard yacht Physalie thought they has the tides mastered and left their dinghy on board when they went ashore. We caught up with them trying to balance on the front of a kayak to get back to their yacht with out getting wet. So we offered them a lift in out much more suitable dinghy and managed to communicate with our broken French and the rudimentary English.

A cup of tea and some cakes later on board their yacht and we were firm friends ! We swapped email addresses and they have just got back in touch with some photos of us aboard their boat.

They also have some of their videos on the web here

http://fr.youtube.com/philatal

As they live in Perros Guirec we hope to call upon them on a future years cruise.

Interactive map of our route for the 2008 Fastnet Cruise

2008-10-21T23:37:00.008+01:00

View Larger Map

Blue is the "outward" journey

Red is the "return" portion

I hope you are impressed with this map - I wish had done it earlir at the begining of the voyage. It took a bit of fiddling to get the dynamic map into the blog but once done it is easy to update via the web. But it does give an easy view of where we went for those (unlike us) who don't have the charts in front of them.

It is only "representative" it's not the actual route we sailed "rock for rock" so

A) Please don't use it to navigate with

B) Don't complain to me if you zoom right in and it crosses the odd bit of land here and there !

We are back !

2008-10-18T16:00:00.008+01:00

OK so we have been back a week so why didn't I post this earlier ?

Well, trying to restore some semblance of normality to a garden which thought it was part of the Amazon rainforest had something to do with it, along with trying to find gainful employment in the worst economic downturn since the 1930's.

For your information the garden is now looking semi-normal but we are still both unemployed so if you have any well paid work in Berkshire then please don't hesitate to get in touch ;-)

So here are the numbers

We spent 88 days away comprising

3 nights at sea (Newtown Creek to Brixham, Scillies to Kinsale, and Glandore to the Scillies)

1 night on a buoy (Hugh Town, Scillies because of a medical appointment the next day)

1 night on visitors pontoon at Fowey

3 nights on a wall (1 * Hugh Town (to fit a battery) and Cape Clear Island which was free)

80 nights at Anchor

For this we paid a total of mooring/anchoring fees of £75.10 comprising

Hugh Town wall £20

Hugh Town Buoy £16

Falmouth Anchorage £25.60

Fowey £13.50

We never paid anything to moor/anchor anywhere in Ireland - thank you to the Irish people !

This worked out at an average of just over 85p a night - even with oncoming doom of a financial depression I feel I can live with this.

We got through 4 bottles of butane (Calor Gas) - costing a total of £67.14

(We managed to change one UK bottle in Baltimore but I wouldn't advise planning to change them in Ireland)

We spent £142.24 on Diesel - mostly for motoring in and out of harbours but some battery charging.

We spent £104.97 on Petrol - mostly for the Generator to charge batteries and some for the outboard engine for the dinghy.

We spent a £79.94 on Laundry - what can I say, we like to be clean.

This makes a total of "attributable" costs of £469.39 - just £5.33 a day.

All other costs I don't have an individual record of but during the the period we were away we spent an additional £3212 which would mostly have been on food & wine with many pub meals/beers thrown in. This makes a total expenditure for the trip of £3682 which includes the cost of buying two new batteries, losing £70 when I lost my wallet and buying some pressies whilst we were away and as many pub meals as we felt like. This is £41.84 per day

Food shopping in Ireland was expensive and this would have pushed this figure up quite a lot as did significant consumption of alcohol!

I worked out the "unattributable" costs by looking at my bank statements - it cost more to keep a empty house at home while we were away than it did to pay for us to cruise !

We covered a total of 1179 miles during our trip. Averaging just over 13 miles a day - a bit fast really we should have taken it slower !

We ran our engine for 169 hours. We used it a lot more on the way out against the prevailing winds and much less on the way back.

We ran the generator for 198 hours. Over two and a quarter houres a day not counting days when the main engine charged the batteries on passage. A Wind Genny is on our Xmas list.

Favourite Anchorage: So many to choose from but it would be difficult to beat Tean in the Isles of Scilly. (Glengariff would come a very close 2nd)

Best "Craic": The Pier House Hotel in CourtMacSherry - Hello to John the barman and owner if you are reading this.

Best Meal: Sunday roast at The New Inn, Tresco, Isles of Scilly

Most Useful passage Anchorage: Falmouth, it's got everything you need

Stormiest Passage: Dartmouth to Poole (by a long shot!)

Easiest Passage: Tean to Falmouth - zoomed along average over 6 knots the whole way.

Most Beautiful place: Glengariff (from a boat)

Friendliest shop - Cape Clear Island - just don't mention the mice in the crisp section that Pippin helped the owner catch

Worst place - Castletownshend - a shocking exception for Ireland but an unfriendly and rude pub that wouldn't let dogs in, a dingy and overpriced local shop and a water supply infected with Cryptosporidium.

Favourite Radio Station: Radio Scilly - go on listen, it's an antedote to modern life - http://www.radioscilly.com/live.php

Most Stupid Mistake : Losing my wallet on Porth Cressa Beach

So would we do it again ?

Too right ? (but maybe with some better weather)

Spain/Portugal 2009 anyone ?

A Gentle Cruise back to the solent

2008-10-17T11:37:00.005+01:00

After our experience getting in to Poole we waited a couple of days for some strong winds to pass and then eventually set sail for the Solent on October 8th. We were originally aiming for the Folly but did so well with the tide we went all the way back to Quayside, our home Marina and tied up. Journey complete !

Got some lovely pictures of Talia gently ghosting along in light winds with the cruising chute up. (Only the second time we had used it on the entire journey!) A very nice gentle way to end the trip... until of course the Mobo wash started hitting us in the Solent but don't get me started !

Best laid plans.....and severe gales

2008-10-07T10:16:00.006+01:00

We never made it to Brixham. Having set off in sunshine, with relatively calm seas and good winds, we made excellent progress from Cawsand and at one point were contemplating extending our passage right across Lyme Bay to Bridport. However, by the time we passed Start Point, the seas had picked up and things were getting uncomfortable so we battled our way into Dartmouth instead.

The next day things seemed to have calmed down somewhat, the north westerly winds had moved back south westerly and although the Met Office forecast predicted gales, the local forecast for Lyme Bay was for F5, possibly increasing to F6 later. With only 30 miles to get to Bridport, we thought it would be an ideal time to scoot across Lyme Bay so we would be much closer to Portland for timing our tides for the notorious Portland Race a day or two later. So much for plans and forecasts!

Things started off well and we whizzed halfway across Lyme Bay before catching an updated forecast with urgent gale warnings. Our F5-6 was now F7-gale 8 in Lyme Bay itself with severe gale 9 predicted round Portland and further out into the Channel. The wave heights had picked up and it struck us that perhaps Bridport was not going to give us enough shelter, even assuming we could get into the harbour. On calling the harbour master, our fears were confirmed - there was no way we could guarantee getting safely into the outer harbour and in any case, there was no room in the inner harbour. The prospect of tying up against a wall in a gale with waves already breaking over said wall was not only unappealing, it was downright dangerous. There was no way to turn back as the waves were too high and cats don't beat to windward particularly well in good conditions, never mind bad ones. So our only (relatively) sensible option seemed to be to head well off-shore to get round Portland against the tide. We checked and re-checked every other option of harbours and possible refuges and reluctantly decided that the off-shore choice was the only one we could take. We both recalled 'Lessons Learned' stories in yacht magazines about people desperately wanting to get the boat tied up in harbour when the safer option would have been to head out to sea and although it was a scary prospect, the possibility of crashing the boat into a harbour wall or the beach was a very real one if we tried to get in.

We were well rested, the boat was capable, we both have experience of bad weather and conditions at the time meant we should be able to head south for a couple of hours without too much difficulty. We called Brixham coastguard to tell them our plans and they agreed that in the circumstances, if we felt we were capable and the boat was up to it, then it was the best solution.

Without going into too much gory detail, I never want to be out in conditions like that ever again. It turned out that I found helming to our course easier than Mark did, and in any case, I was battling against sea-sickness and had no chance of going below to do any navigation. The sea state got much worse than the forecasts had predicted and despite our best efforts to claw southwards to 5+ miles south of Portland, after achieving the waypoint, we were pushed back north frighteningly close to the dreaded Shambles just as it was getting dark because it became impossible to hold any course other than east.
We did eventually scramble our way past first Portland Race, then St Albans Race and once we turned north into Swanage Bay, the wave heights dropped from about 5-6m to a more manageable 3m. The relief on finally seeing Old Harry Rocks and picking out the red and green channel buoys was indescribable, until Mark came up with the news that the gale forecast had been updated and our severe gale 9 was now an imminent Storm force 10.
We only had a scrap of genoa out and we were starting to get shelter from Studland Bay so we put the engine on, furled the sail completely and raced down the channel into Poole Harbour to find a relatively sheltered anchorage behind Brownsea Island.

All things considered, although we were shaken by the experience, we felt we had pretty much done the right things (other than staying put in Dartmouth in the first place!). We were constantly evaluating our position and options, we reefed early, we had a 'passage bag' ready with snacks and drinks and we used each other's strengths to best advantage. Ironically, things would have been easier if we had been truly off-shore with no danger of hitting land, since we could have just turned our backs to the wind, streamed warps to slow right down and just ridden out the storms.

Homeward bound

2008-10-02T15:42:00.006+01:00

After a week of sunning ourselves, the easterlies finally gave up and we sailed from Tean in the Scillies to Falmouth in about 11 hours. After a day off to rest, we picked up strong westerly winds (with 3 metre seas!) and sailed / surfed our way back to Cawsand Bay just outside Plymouth, averaging over 6 knots under genoa alone. Excitement for the day was provided by the Royal Navy who were on exercise in the area doing live firing practice. After Tamsyn called the warship to check we weren't in the firing line, it rapidly became apparent that actually we were in the danger zone! After a few exchanges with the warship, then with safety control, it was established that their helicopter had us and a few other yachts under observation and we were permitted to proceed on course, with a warning to stay 1.5 miles clear of a certain point.
We actually ended up passing within about 400 metres of the ship whilst it was firing (in the opposite direction!) and watched it turn around a couple of times to present alternate sides to the firing area. Very impressive sight, though somewhat alarming at first.....

We are heading eastwards again tomorrow, aiming for Brixham, then will probably take 2 or 3 hops to get back to the Solent, rather than the long haul straight back.

Porth Cressa, Scillies

2008-09-24T19:12:00.003+01:00

We finally made it back to St Mary's after a rather rough crossing in F5-6 winds and lumpy seas and crashed into bed early, sleeping round the clock!
The winds have turned easterly and look set to stay that way for several days so we'll be staying in the Scillies until they turn round again - where were the easterlies when we wanted to go west??!!

Looking forward to some chilling out in the sunshine and getting the last of the damp stuff dried out, including the cabin cushion in the starboard hull that got soaked with sea water through a leak in the window seal.....

Union Hall / Glandore

2008-09-20T20:07:00.007+01:00

We attempted to leave for the Scillies from Castle Haven but the wind wouldn’t cooperate, being too light and fluky even for the cruising chute. Instead we moved a little further along the coast back to Glandore and Union Hall since we know we can get at least intermittent internet access here and can also get a few supplies and some decent food in pubs that like dogs.
We have a lovely high pressure system that is giving us plenty of sun, but not much wind and what there is, is mostly in the wrong direction, so it looks as though we will be here until Sunday or Monday.

When we did leave we were greated with the several sightings of Dolphins. They are extrodinarily difficult to catch on stills photos but you can get glimpses in some of these movies.

Loch Hyne and Castle Haven

2008-09-20T20:06:00.005+01:00

Loch Hyne was a beautiful spot where a freshwater Loch is only connected by the narrowest piece of water to the sea. We dinghied through the "rapids" and then could get back for several hours until the tide reversed. We spent a couple of night here before moving on.

We anchored upriver of the village, Castletownshend, although it was difficult to find a space amongst all the moorings. The first afternoon, we went across the far side of the river to Reen though there was nothing to be seen other than the pier.
On venturing to Castletownshend the following day, we were shocked to read the notice about the contaminated water up by the shop as there was no indication by the tap on the quay and we had planned to put more water in the tanks. I guess as it’s out of season now, they’re not really thinking of visiting yachts and the locals would all know anyway.
We were a bit disappointed with the village – the guide books had led us to believe it was larger than it actually is. One of the two pubs has closed down and neither of the restaurants looked like they had been in business for a while either, with tractors and diggers in the yard of one of them. The remaining pub wouldn’t let Pippin in, which is the first time we’ve encountered that so far in Ireland. At least we’ve had some sunshine for a couple of days so September is turning out to be a lot better than August in that respect.
We’ve had no mobile or internet access for a while but I did manage to find a postbox so I could let people know we’re still alive via snail mail.

A major grouch is for MarineCall who advertise weather forecasts via mobile phone text message in the current edition of the PBO Almanac. When we tried, three times I got a text back saying that the location I had entered was not recognised by their system, even though each one was exactly as stated in the Almanac. What really narked us was the suggestion at the end of each text saying we should look up the current locations on the internet. If we had access to the internet, we wouldn’t need their rip-off text messages as we could get as many forecasts as we wanted free of charge!

Cape Clear Island

2008-09-20T20:05:00.001+01:00

Managed to sail to Cape Clear Island although the swell was pretty horrible until we got round Mizen Head and it was behind us, rather than sideways on. We stayed a few days at Cape though we didn’t see much of the island as most of the time it was shrouded in fog!
For the first time we actually used our fender boards as we tied up against the wall in the inner harbour well out of the way of the ferries and fishing boats.
Filling the tanks was a repeat of the episode at Glengarriff, with about 60 litres of water being ferried by dinghy each time from the tap on the quay opposite Talia. Similarly, diesel was topped up by several visits to the pump with cans and we were lucky enough to be able to get petrol too. One of the reasons we stayed a few days was that fuel was only available from 9:30 to 4:00 on weekdays and we arrived late on Friday afternoon, so couldn’t fill up until Monday morning.
We made friends with the guy who runs the little shop / bar / café on the quay and popped in several times for meals or drinks. Pippin became dubbed the mouse-hound after she went ballistic one quiet evening (luckily with no other customers around!) and found traces of mice behind the freezer and under a shelf. A rapid hunt for mouse traps ensued and after eight were set in various places, two of the wee beasties were caught overnight.
Filling the water tanks was a repeat of the episode at Glengarriff, with about 60 litres of water being ferried by dinghy each time from the tap on the quay opposite Talia. We had reason to be grateful for making the effort when we moved on as both Castle Haven and Glandore/Union Hall have contaminated water supplies so all water needs to be boiled before using it to wash food or cook with or even cleaning your teeth.

Return to Castletownbere

2008-09-11T11:58:00.001+01:00

Yet more bad weather on our way back down the bay meant that our progress was painfully slow, at one point less than 2 knots, in stark contrast to our journey the other way. It took us over 4 hours to do 10 miles but we arrived in time to get to the chandlery. Unfortunately they don’t stock marine batteries so we ended up buying a heavy-duty car battery from the garage and swapping all the batteries around as it can only be used for starting the engine, not for running our power-hungry fridge.

Gales have moved from southerly to northerly and westerly so we’re planning to stock up on supplies and scoot back round Mizen Head as soon as we get a lull, probably on Friday.

Pippin is now pretty much back to normal so we’re very relieved, though somewhat shocked that the effects lasted so long.

Adrigole

2008-09-11T11:57:00.001+01:00

After a fairly quiet night, but without much sleep due to Pippin being restless, we sailed back down Bantry Bay about 10 miles to the tiny bay of Adrigole. We tucked well in to try and get some shelter from the forecast southerly gales. Although still struggling with her back legs, Pippin is a lot better today and is able to jump up into the cockpit, though she still can’t manage the steps into the hulls. She seems to be getting a lot stronger and bounced around wanting to play, though I’ll have to get the vet’s advice about worming her in future as she always seems to have a bad reaction, though this is by far the worst.

We stayed in Adrigole for a couple of days as the gales meant we couldn’t move further down Bantry Bay and there wasn’t much point going back up! We managed one afternoon of lovely sunshine so we went for a walk to try and find a stone circle mentioned in the guide book (but without any directions). We didn’t find it, but saw several standing stones and had some amazing views across the mountains. We could easily spend another week or more here if it wasn’t for time constraints. Pippin is still improving and walked most of the 2½ miles, with only brief spells of being carried. A delightful highlight was seeing an otter playing and fishing around Talia.

One of our batteries has died so instead of finding a new anchorage, we’re going to have to go back to Castletownbere to the chandlery to replace it.

Bantry

2008-09-11T11:56:00.001+01:00

Before leaving Glengarriff Harbour, we made a visit to Ilnacullin Gardens on Garinish Island. Pippin was allowed to come too so we spent a couple of hours wandering around, enjoying the sunshine. Mark opened his birthday presents ably assisted by Pippin, who was convinced that rustling paper meant there were biscuits somewhere nearby!

The following morning we crossed over the bay to Bantry itself. Although the scenery is beautiful, the town itself doesn’t have an awful lot to recommend it and though we had planned to have lunch ashore, we didn’t see anywhere to tempt us. In addition, Pippin wasn’t well after having a worming tablet the night before and she couldn’t walk properly, so we were hampered by having to carry her each time her back legs gave out. In the end, we took it in turns to whisk round SuperValu, grabbing essentials whilst one of us stayed with Pippin. We headed back to Talia and decided our anchorage wasn’t safe, so we had lunch then moved across to tuck in behind Rabbit Island for the night.

Glengarriff

2008-09-07T18:51:00.003+01:00

We headed further into Bantry Bay and made our way up to Glengarriff with a very strong following wind and huge surfing rollers, piling straight in from the Atlantic storms. At one point we reached 12.3 knots on the GPS – hardly exciting news in a car, but well over double our normal cruising speed on a boat. A journey that we had expected to take around 4½ hours was completed in about 3.

Glengarriff Harbour has absolutely stunning scenery, with mountains all around in the background and lots of wooded hills coming down to the shoreline. There are several colonies of seals and we saw plenty of them hauling themselves out onto rocks near the boat – presumably to rest, since they had slim chance of sunning themselves!

We found a noticeboard giving details of a “Sli Na Slainte” or “Walk for Health” and decided to give it a try. All I can say is that someone in Cork County Council has a very strange idea of health. The main part of the ‘trail’ is along a main road with no pavement or verges with a speed limit of 100 km/h, and lots of blind bends! After a nasty incident with an oncoming transit van on our side of the road and an articulated lorry storming down the other side of the road, we decided our healthiest option was to get back to town as quickly as possible.

The gales were forecast to change direction so we decided to cross to the other side of the harbour for more shelter. On the way, we took the opportunity to raft up on one of the ferry boats to fill our water tanks from the tap on the pier. Nice idea but somewhat tricky in practice. Our hose was several metres too short so we ended up filling our main water tanks (which hold around 120 litres each) using 5 and 10 litre water containers. Needless to say, it took a while……

Castletownbere

2008-09-07T18:50:00.002+01:00

Our next plan was to make a short trip past some of the islands to Crookhaven, but the weather forecast indicated that more gales were due within 24 hours and winds were likely to remain strong for a couple of days after that. Instead we had a long day bashing round to Castletownbere (full name Castletown Bearhaven!) where we tucked into a tiny spot between numerous moorings and plenty of rocks! We were well sheltered from the next set of gales that came in so we achieved our main objective.
Mark was adamant that he wanted pictures taken outside McCarthy’s Bar with him holding the book of the same name that has a picture of the same bar on its cover. We found the bar and discovered the author of the book had photo-shopped its name to suit the book title! Once inside, we found plenty of people, though they were mostly tourists, or film crew who are making a film allegedly based in Castletownbere, but actually mainly being filmed in another village that looks more authentically Irish.

Baltimore, Skibbereen and Heir Island

2008-09-07T18:47:00.004+01:00

We got to Baltimore relatively early so ended up having lunch ashore. Having found a new gas cylinder and topped up some of our water, there didn’t seem to be much reason to stay, so we headed on up the river to find a quiet spot to anchor for the night.
Having stopped and settled, we worked out that to take the dinghy up to Skibbereen on the tides without running out of water to float on meant that we would have to leave around 7:30am and probably wouldn’t be able to get back until about 4:30pm. Since we needed fuel, it seemed prudent to venture up on the evening tide with the fuel cans in the dinghy to get diesel and petrol and then to work out whether it was worth spending the entire day in Skibbereen tomorrow. As it happened, it wasn’t! We got the fuel, grabbed a somewhat grim takeaway and then headed back downriver to Talia. On the way back, we stopped off to visit the famine graves at Abbeystrowry.

The following morning, we went back downriver on the early tide and anchored off Heir Island, wrongly named on the Admiralty Charts as Hare Island. Whilst walking there with Pippin on her lead, we were accosted by a tiny old lady jabbering at us in very fast gaelic. When she realised we couldn’t understand her, she switched to equally fast and almost indecipherable English, the gist of which was that Pippin should be kept on a string to stop her from bothering the animals. Once she realised Pippin was actually on a lead, she calmed down. Later Mark declared that he could see where legends of leprechauns had come from as he thought we’d just met one!

We also dinghied across Roaring Water Bay in an attempt to find the ruins of the castle that we could see from Talia, but every time we thought we were nearly there, the ruins seemed to disappear. We never did get to see them close up, though we had some spectacular views across the bays to compensate.

Complaints...complaints

2008-09-04T17:34:00.003+01:00

So the select readership out there in e-world have been complaining about my photos. The latest one was so amusing I thought I would post it ;-)

"By the way, I couldn’t help but notice that the ratio of Tamsyn:Mark photographs is outrageously skewed by a factor of some 8:1. Whilst on some level this is understandable (who would want to look at your face repeatedly?), I feel that the principles of yin and yang ... require that both beauty and beast are present in equal measure. I suggest the following simple routine to rectify the matter.

1 shot of the other each, per landing, looking moody/artistic/sexy/stressed as the mood takes you

1 shot of both of you, per landing, holding a recent paper under the caption “It’s OK Mom, we’re not dead”

I am not sure I will be taking my learned friends advice. But dear readership your continued feedback is appreciated.

Glandore and Union Hall

2008-08-29T16:34:00.003+01:00

Thu 28 Aug
The alarm went off at 6am and by half past, we were raising the anchor and preparing to creep out past all the moorings to catch the favourable tide. We had a glorious sunrise and we even saw the sun for about 15 minutes as it rose above the headland. Unfortunately, by 7am it had disappeared behind the clouds and that was the last we saw of it during the journey. The winds were very light so we motored most of the way, though we were finally able to get the sails up when we turned to enter the bay. The cloudy day we started with, turned into a misty day, then into full-on fog. For several hours we ventured on in our own little grey bubble, only being able to see about half a mile in any direction. As we got closer to our destination, we were both starting to get concerned as land was less than a mile away and we couldn’t see it. By this point visibility was down to less than 400 metres but since we were in over 30 metres of water, there was no possibility of anchoring to wait for the fog to lift.
It was quite shocking to suddenly see the cliffs in front of us, even though we knew they were there, as the light grey murk gave no hint whatsoever. Thank goodness for GPS!

Luckily, as we crept into the bay, the fog started to lift – the further in we got, the more we could see, until there was no mist at all, just a faint haze. When we looked behind though, there was still a massive wall of fog, with wisps of it following us into the bay. It actually looked quite sinister and Mark videoed a billowing swirling cloud that seemed to be tracking us.
We tucked right round the corner close to Union Hall to anchor – Glandore is on the opposite side of the bay so we’ll take the dinghy over there tomorrow.

As we sorted ourselves out, the sun emerged and we had a glorious afternoon of sunshine as we explored Union Hall. As we motored to the quay in the dinghy, a curious seal poked his head out of the water about 4 feet away to have a look at us. He was much bigger than the seals we’d seen before, but was completely unafraid of us. He followed us to the beach and I was able to get some fairly close pictures of his head before he got bored and swam off.

The guidebook had mentioned a general hardware store where we could get more gas so Mark lugged the empty bottle into town, only for us to find the store had closed down and the supermarket only stocks ‘Koz’ gas. We’ve only just switched on the new bottle so we’ll try again at Baltimore, otherwise we’ll probably manage until we get back to Kinsale or Cork.

Fri 29 Aug
Glandore is even smaller than Union Hall, with no shop, just a couple of pubs and bars. We walked about 2 miles or so to the Drombeg stone circle with Pippin doing her best to get run over by every passing car, despite being on a tight lead. She has this uncanny ability to jump sideways, straight into the path of vehicle tyres – never mind the nine lives of a cat, she obviously thinks she’s immortal !
The stone circle is quite a small one, with other stones nearby marking out cooking places and a well. Its history is unknown, though excavations in the 60’s discovered the cremated remains of a young boy buried in a pot at the centre. Quite how they worked out it was a young boy from ashes wasn’t clear – there’s not a lot of information about the site anywhere that we could find, either on noticeboards or in our guidebooks.

On the way back we stopped for lunch at the Glandore Inn – the sun hadn’t quite managed to come out but it was a warm muggy day so we were quite startled to look out to sea to face another bank of fog rapidly moving inland. By the time we got back to Talia, Glandore was out of sight and within half an hour of getting back, visibility was back down to about 200 metres. We were planning to move on to Baltimore tomorrow but will definitely be waiting for a weather forecast before attempting to set off !

CourtMacSherry

2008-08-29T16:33:00.002+01:00

Mon 25 Aug
We had nearly run out of water after deliberately running the tanks down to make the crossing to Ireland easier (which definitely made a difference to the motion of the boat) so when we dropped by the marina for diesel, it took about half an hour to fill both tanks and all the drinking water bottles. It meant that Talia was very heavy for the next stage and she dug her bows into every wave, meaning we lurched about far more than on previous trips.
Another bash to windward brought us about 20 miles further west to a tiny village with the activity being described in the guidebook as “What happens in Court Mac? The tide comes in; and the tide goes out again” !!
It’s a lovely place, completely unspoilt, though there are plans for a big marina. Talking with John the barman at Pier House pub, it seems that it may take a while for planning permission to be granted and plans to be finalised so if anyone’s thinking of heading out this way, do it now!
I tried Murphys which is very smooth and creamy – after having a pint of Guiness and tasting my Murphys, Mark also switched.

Tue 26 Aug
We finally got the folding bikes off the boat and onto the road! It wasn’t as difficult as we thought it might be, once we’d managed to get the bikes into the dinghy, as we had a pontoon at the pier for getting them set up. It would have been much more difficult on any of the beaches we’ve been accustomed to landing on!
We cycled 4km to Timoleague with Pippin scampering alongside on her lead for part of the way. When we started off, she decided it was a race and was towing me along via her collar and lead before I’d even managed to get my feet on the pedals. I was worried she would choke herself though she didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered, so we stopped and I put her harness on and clipped her lead to that. Off she went again, with me scarcely getting a chance to pedal, so after a bit, I picked her up and put her into a bag to carry her so she could get her breath back.

We explored the ruined abbey, which surprisingly has recent graves in the grounds, then went into the little town. We had a picnic back down by the water in front of the abbey, then headed back. This time Pippin was a bit more sensible and trotted along happily beside my bike. My only problem then was her sudden dives sideways into the bushes after some enticing scent which threatened to fling me over the handlebars on several occasions.
Eventually she got tired so I carried her again until we got to the outskirts of CourtMacSherry. I let her down for a run in the little park but was horrified to see her suddenly being chased by two ponies. Luckily they veered off as she swerved round a bush to get to me but the last thing we expected to see on such a tiny patch of grass was horses being exercised! The park can’t be more than 30m wide and is only about 150m long – the field where the ponies are kept must be much bigger.

Wed 27 Aug
We went out the other way towards the point to do part of the coastal walk and Pippin had a great time charging around the woods and pouncing on us from behind bushes. When we got out to the headland, we couldn’t actually see very much as fog had descended and visibility was down to about half a mile. We had an early dinner on board and went back ashore to walk Pippin and to visit the Pier Head pub for another Murphys or two. We’d met Danny and Joan on Monday and they came in shortly afterwards, so we spent an hour or two chatting with them before heading back to pack up ready for an early departure the following morning.

Kinsale

2008-08-26T12:12:00.003+01:00

Fri 22 Aug
We had a long walk to Charles Fort to stretch our legs and spent about an hour exploring the ruins. It was very quiet with only a few tourists – we were expecting a lot more people, but it seems the wet summer is affecting Ireland as much as the Scillies. We had lunch in the Bulman Pub in Summer Cove and were very impressed with the menu as we’d been expecting bog standard pub grub. Mark had his first Irish Guiness of the trip – I tasted it and it wasn’t nearly as bitter as English Guiness and much creamier than I had anticipated but I was happy to stick with lager and lime.
On our way back, we met up with a couple who were doing some gardening close to the path. Irish hospitality is legendary and after reading books like McCarthy’s Bar, I always suspected it was somewhat exaggerated. So I was more than a little shocked less than an hour later to be escorted around the home of a multi-millionaire who mainly lives in the USA – Ray and Joan are the caretakers and are justifiably proud of the house and gardens that they look after.

Sat 23 Aug
After a relatively dry day yesterday, today the rain was back with a vengeance. We headed over to James Fort on the opposite headland but it is a very small ruin and it was all fenced off, with nothing to see. Since we were already wet, we decided to take the dinghy back over to Kinsale to stock up on some shopping.

Sun 24 Aug
A lazy day strolling through town with lunch at The Spaniard. This pub is allegedly where the gastronomic reputation of Kinsale originally started, leading to several highly regarded restaurants being set up in town. We keep hearing reports of the weather being about to improve, and the winds are easing a bit after picking up again so we’re planning to move on tomorrow.

To Ireland - Bryher to Kinsale

2008-08-26T11:57:00.007+01:00

So I (Mark) have been busy editing pics and have finally found some bandwidth to upload them all - there are now LOADS - all the way back to Plymouth so go back and have a look. I will let Tamsyn update all the text shortly but here are a couple of piccies of the trip across from Bryher to Kinsale.

One is the sunrise as we approach the Irish coast, another of Tamsyn raising the Irish Courtesy flag and finally I have one of what was (honest) a Dolphin - we saw a couple of pods on the way over and had a great view but they are very difficult to photograph.

Tamsyn's update:
Another long haul - 27 hours this time - and our plans to pick a decent weather window half worked. We set off with a reasonable amount of wind, but somewhat rough seas and although we managed to sail for the first 10 hours, a lot of our progress seemed to be up and down waves rather than forwards! Unfortunately, the wind eventually dropped off enough that by 8pm we were forced to start the engine and plod onwards motor-sailing. We always do better under sail (assuming there is enough wind) so our anticipated 20 hours suddenly started to stretch. We never got enough wind to put the genny back out but at least the seas flattened out and the rain stayed away.

We saw dolphins several times, this time common dolphins which are smaller than bottlenose dolphins and have darker backs and light bellies. One of the best sightings was at 9am on the second morning when we had an escort of two dolphins, then suddenly a whole pod of about 30 dolphins was leaping through the water coming to greet us from about half a mile away. It was an amazing sight and even though they didn't stay for long, it was definitely a special highlight of the trip so far.

When we eventually saw land again, it was another defining moment. We had been out of sight of land for about 20 hours and as we got closer, we could actually smell land. It was something we'd read about but had never been at sea long enough to experience - the scent of salt and sea gives way to something akin to a cross between cut grass and rotting vegetation. It isn't as bad as it sounds, just incredibly difficult to describe accurately.

Kinsale is lovely and as soon as we'd anchored, we couldn't wait to get in the dinghy to go and explore. In the end, we stayed for several days, just to chill out after the crossing and to stock up on supplies again before heading out to quieter spots further west along the coast.

Onward planning

2008-08-19T18:40:00.005+01:00

We are chilling out to the point where my diary entries are minimal - nothing much happens from one day to the next. If (when!) it rains, we read and I stitch or write postcards. When the sun deigns to poke its nose out from behind the clouds, we take Pippin for a walk or meander to the Fraggle Rock Cafe for a drink. We are taking advantage of all the organic vegetables that are for sale on little stalls all over the place - they have so much flavour compared with anything we can buy from the little stores. We've also decided to experiment and bought half a dozen duck eggs instead of hens eggs. We haven't tried them yet though I'm not sure if they're supposed to taste very different or not.

Pippin is managing to create more adventures for herself. She had another dunking when she fell off the boat quite early one morning, before we'd really stirred ourselves out of bed. She'd gone out to shout at someone passing by in a dinghy for having the temerity to invade her space and when she didn't reappear, we weren't unduly worried as she often sits out on deck watching the world go by.

However, Mark heard some unusual splashing and after a little while, we decided we'd better investigate. Little Four Paws appeared to be struggling somewhat and the dinghy was very securely tied on, so I also got a dunking as I jumped in to grab her. After slinging her in the dinghy and dragging myself in, it took a few minutes for Mark to get us both back on board. Although it was quite funny, it was also a salutory lesson - munchkin is not a good swimmer so she must be supervised any time she goes out.

We are scrutinising the weather forecasts several times a day and we think we finally have a weather window that will allow us to head for Ireland. So unless something drastically changes overnight, we are planning to leave tomorrow for Kinsale, just west of Cork. After a few days of relative inactivity, we are both excited to be doing something and making more progress on our trip. This evening will be spent in preparing everything we will need on a 24+ hour passage, then it will be an early night and hopefully a bright day tomorrow.

Bryher

2008-08-19T18:33:00.002+01:00

Thur 14th Aug
Although it’s been very convenient to dry out on the beach, the swell means that we have a bumpy landing and lift-off and we have being meaning to move for a couple of days. Unfortunately, the strong winds have whipped up the seas to rough and very rough, so there’s no way we were going to poke our noses out of the exposed northern end of Tresco to move round into Green Bay. Today however, the seas have calmed right down so we’ve moved to Bryher. The guide books recommend Green Bay as a very sheltered anchorage for boats that can dry out, but neglect to mention the numerous little rocks scattered all over the beach! Luckily the sun cooperated by showing sand as turquoise and rocks/weed as dark patches, so we’re fairly confident that we won’t land on anything nasty when the tide ebbs.

Fri 15th Aug
We strolled around Bryher, getting wet as usual. We had a pasty & sausage roll from the little shop, eaten at Fraggle Rock Café (yes, THE Fraggle Rock of the children’s TV programme) as the chef was having a day off.
We met Phillipe & Chantal who I ‘rescued’ after they got the tide times wrong and were stranded on shore whilst their dinghy floated happily behind their yacht. Phillipe was attempting to hitch a ride on a sit-upon kayak but he looked very precarious and there wasn’t much room for the kayaker to paddle. As we were very close and Talia was still dried out, I waded ashore with our dinghy and took them back in a bit more comfort!
Later we went over in our dinghy to invite them back to ours for a coffee. They immediately insisted that we come on board their boat instead – having seen their expresso maker, it’s probably just as well. I very much doubt that Nescafe instant would have been appreciated!!

We are not very fluent in French and they were not very fluent in English, but we muddled through for a happy hour or so, mangling each other’s languages but still communicating pretty well.

Tresco and St Martins

2008-08-19T18:29:00.003+01:00

Sat 9th Aug
After a restful night, the strong southerly winds started to drive us further up the beach so we hauled the anchors and crossed over the inlet to Tresco. St Martins will have to wait for a couple of days, but there’s plenty to explore in the meantime. If the rain ever stops. We are not sure if it’s ok to dry out on the beach, but we are very sheltered here so if no-one asks us to move, we should be well out of the way of the next set of gales that have been forecast.

Sun 10th Aug
Long walk round Tresco. Picked up a few supplies but discovered that the shop doesn’t provide plastic bags – if you don’t have your own bag, you have to pay £1.20 for a fabric one. As we only had a few bits and pieces, we stuffed everything we could into our pockets and carried half a pound of mince and a pack of sausages in our hands! Typical that the only time I forget to pop my Onya-back rucksack into my pocket, we need it.

Mon 11th Aug
We took the dinghy right across the bay to St Martins since it is unlikely we will anchor off Tean again. It’s a very quiet island but it has a lovely pub up on the side of the hill called the Seven Stones, where we had birthday lunch. Going out for dinner is going to have to wait until a decent restaurant and an evening that is not likely to produce a deluge coincide! We got soaked coming back in the dinghy as the wind had picked up a bit and waves were breaking on the beach. The dinghy got broad-sided by a particularly large wave and we were swamped. So we dragged the dinghy back up onto the beach, tipped all the water out and had another go…
It turned out to be the right decision to head back as within half an our of return, the heavens opened and it didn’t stop raining until after we had gone to bed.

Tue 12th Aug
Rain. The only word I had put in my diary for Tuesday so obviously getting wet is becoming somewhat monotonous! We are actually finally settling down to the cruising way of life – the mentality is much slower than we are used to and it’s taken a while to accept that maybe we will get something done on a particular day, or maybe we won’t. The notion of having time on our side is quite novel – it doesn’t actually matter if it takes 2 hours to get ashore and walk to and from the shop to do a bit of shopping for a single meal, whereas at home, it would be a nightmare.

Wed 13th Aug
Another chill-out day. I had an excellent massage which dug a lot of kinks out of my neck and shoulders and I just luxuriated in being pampered for an hour. It was another novel experience to have to wade ashore and walk up the beach to get there – my feet were covered with sparkling quartz sand which stuck like glue so I ended up going to the loos to wash it off before presenting myself at the therapists! Actually, I think we are probably a tad on the scruffy side for Tresco – there seem to be a lot of very posh accents in the bar and around the coastal paths and having looked up the Flying Boat Club on the internet, we have discovered why. It costs over £3,000 a week for each apartment in high season!!! I think we come under the category of “grotty yachties” rather than “snotty yachties” so I don’t think we will be partaking of the lobster bisque or cocktail mixes available for purchase in Tresco Stores ;-)

Isles of Scilly

2008-08-14T19:33:00.004+01:00

After over a week of not having mobile phone or modem signals, we are finally back online. It's taken me nearly an hour to get the mouse to cooperate, and I've rebooted 6 times so future updates might be a bit few and far between! Anyway, here are some brief updates on what we've seen of the islands so far:

Sun 3rd Aug
After moving the boat closer into the bay out of the swell, we walked across the island to Hugh Town. About halfway there, it started to rain again so by the time we got there, we were soaked again. Luckily the Bishop and Wolf was more than happy to accommodate soggy people and even soggier dogs, so we stopped for lunch and dried off a bit. The couple on the table next to us have been coming back to the islands for years and they couldn’t remember it ever being such bad weather at this time of year before. Great! Not quite what we wanted to hear!
When the deluge had slowed to a moderate downpour, we headed to the Co-Op to pick up some bits and pieces, then meandered back to the boat. On the way back, the rain finally gave up and the sun came out – it even got quite warm so things were looking a lot better by the time we finally got back on board, having done a 6.5 mile round trip.

Mon 4th Aug
Pippin’s birthday! After shaking one of her new teddies to death and suspiciously poking her crowing cockerel a few times, Pippin then tried to bury her new pig’s ear. After being prevented from digging out her lawn, she settled for stuffing it down the seat cushions and covering it with a blanket.More bright sunshine convinced us to go for a longer walk along the coastal path around the north side of St Mary’s to see the ancient barrows and look out towards several other islands like St Martins, Tresco and St Agnes. Eight miles into our 11 mile tour and it started to rain again so we arrived back on Talia like drowned rats. The place has now been nicknamed The Isles of Soggy because we haven’t managed to stay dry for more than a few hours in a row.
Spent half an hour pulling thorns out of Pippin’s face and legs after some over-enthusiastic rabbit-chasing.

Tue 5th Aug
Damp but slightly warmer day so we decided to laze about on Talia to try to avoid our daily wetting. Several of the boats previously anchored with us had moved off after quite a lot of swell came round into the cove overnight, but a new boat dropped anchor near us. When the couple came back from their walk, Mark invited them over for a cup of tea which they bravely accepted, despite Pippin doing her best to imitate a fierce protective guard dog by barking her head off at them each time they rowed past. Nick and Tina from Vandal (dinghy named Little Thug!) are based in Milford Haven and have spent several holidays exploring the Scillies and Ireland so they recommended lots of places for us to visit.
After we had spent some time on their boat drinking all their wine, we invited them back to Talia for the following evening.

Wed 6th Aug
After a very bouncy night where I didn’t get much sleep, I was feeling quite sick and it was obvious we were going to have to move. Vandal had internal lights switched on in the early hours of the morning, and they had already left by the time Mark woke up so we weren’t the only ones to suffer the change in wind direction.

We moved round to St Mary’s Harbour to get fuel and gas and to collect our new battery. We rafted on Ocean Warrior against the harbour wall for a couple of hours so we could fill the water tanks but then ended up staying the night as we weren’t allowed to dry out on the beach and the moorings looked just as bad as the anchorage we’d just left. Since we were so close to town, we did a load of food shopping, then I wandered around town with Pippin and dropped in on Scilly Pete for a chat. He checked the weather forecast and things are due to improve by Friday so he may come out for a sail.

Helford River and beyond

2008-08-14T19:32:00.002+01:00

Thur 31 July
The weather seemed to be brightening up so we took the dinghy downriver to Helford village and wandered past the post office and across a small ford. The coastal path was too soggy for us to get very far, so after loading up with giant pasties and sticky buns, we got back in the dinghy and crossed to Helford Passage on the opposite side. From there we walked to the next village in intermittent drizzle, then headed back to get a drink at the pub. Since the weather was closing in, we hopped back into the dinghy and set off back to the boat. The drizzle quickly turned to rain, then to an absolute downpour so we were completely soaked by the time we got back – it would be nice to see the sun occasionally!
We were hoping to head out to Newlyn tomorrow but the forecast is for more thundery rain and rough seas so it looks as though we’ll have to stay put for another day.

Fri 1st Aug
Tipped it down with rain nearly all day so Pippin had to make do with her lawn until about 4pm when the sky finally went from thundery black to miserable grey and the rain and drizzle finally petered out. We scooted across to Tremayne Quay for a quick walk in the woods, but it was raining again by the time we came back so that was our brief foray for the day over and done with. The forecast has gone from grim to moderate, so we might make a run for Newlyn in the morning to have a change a scenery whilst waiting for a window to cross to the Scillies.

Sat 2nd Aug
Woke up to a startlingly bright morning with a rare visit from the sun! Headed out of the river into a stomach-churning swell but decided to press on as things looked set to improve during the day with lively winds before going nasty again on Sunday.

When we got to the point where we could either turn right and head into the bay for Newlyn, or else continue on to the Scillies, we were flying through the water at over 7 knots in the right direction so we changed the plan and decided to keep going. Even if we dropped our speed to 5 knots, we should still be safely in the lee of the islands by about 8pm. Nice theory!
In the event, the wind shifted, then died so we were forced to motor against tide for a while, then managed to motorsail to pick up a bit of speed later on. We eventually arrived in an anchorage off St Mary’s just after midnight, in fog. We literally couldn’t see the island in front of us from half a mile away and it was only GPS and the anchor lights of boats in the bay that confirmed we had arrived safely!

We dropped the anchor and once we were sure it had set, we crashed into bed for a few hours.

Helford River

2008-08-04T21:05:00.003+01:00

Mon 28 July
Did a load more food shopping, filled up with water, diesel and petrol and got wet getting everything back on board as the fine weather has finally broken. We headed out to the Helford River and as there were strong headwinds, we motored since we needed to recharge the batteries as usual!

Anchored just past the last of the moorings as there are oyster beds further upriver and anchoring is prohibited. We had plenty of rain and the forecast has changed to strong winds over the next couple of days so we may be here longer than originally anticipated.

Tue 29 July
More heavy rain and freshening winds means there are white caps on the river, even this far inshore. Having picked up the forecast, with lots of strong winds on the nose and thundery rain, we have decided to sneak much further up the river on the rising tide and dry out tonight and possibly tomorrow as well. According to the guide book, we may be able to tie up on the quay at Gweek – there are more facilities than we would have expected, plus a seal sanctuary, so it sounds quite an idyllic little place to hole up for a couple of days.

Wed 30 July
Gweek turned out to be very over-hyped. We crept up cautiously, got within sight of the very dilapidated boat yard and quay and decided to turn around and anchor a bit further down river just before the start of the oyster beds. We ended up dropping the hook near Tremayne Quay where we went ashore to walk through woods owned by the National Trust.

St Mawes

2008-08-04T21:01:00.005+01:00

For those who complain I write too much...

Spent a couple of days up river past St Mawes before coming back to Falmouth for supplies.

P.S. It's not compulsory to read everything here. There is no test afterwards!!

For everyone else....

Fri 25 July
After discovering the reason that mooring on the fuel pontoon is prohibited when it’s closed – the whole pontoon gets towed away by the harbour master for refilling! – we decided that refuelling was probably best done soon after the pontoons’ return. At busy times, it runs out of fuel every day!

Mark managed to find a chandlery tucked away down a tiny side street and they were happy to let Pippin in with us, so he had a blissful half-hour exploring the surprisingly big store. We left with a chunky piece of rope to try and stop the rudder from banging at night but realised we’d forgotten to measure the size of one of the blocks for furling the genoa. One of the wheels on the block is starting to disintegrate, presumably from UV damage, but since the furling line is a continuous line with a very neat splice, we will probably need professional help to undo the line, replace the block and then re-splice as the splicing needs to be thin enough to go through blocks and the furler itself.

Since we had done all the laundry, we took the opportunity to access the cubby hole under the bed before remaking it. Pippin stuck her nose in and managed to snag a new toy, a small grey rhinoceros, which promptly got shaken to bits before having its stuffing pulled out. We secreted a few more bits and pieces away then packed up ready to cross the harbour to St Mawes.

St Mawes itself is packed with moorings which made it quite tricky to weave our way between all the boats to get further upriver. Eventually we emerged by Percuil sailing club and found a quiet spot to anchor. Sitting in the sunshine on the foredeck in such peaceful surroundings, it was hard to believe we were only 3 miles from the bustle of Falmouth.
We took the dinghy back downriver to St Mawes and beached it, before strolling through the little town. We walked up to St Mawes Castle, then meandered our way back to have an ice-cream, then sit outside the pub with a drink, watching the world go by.

Sat 26 July
I was startled to get up in the morning and not be able to see outside – a thick fog had descended and we couldn’t see boats that were moored less than 50 metres away. The sun made a brave attempt to break through but was soon smothered again. It was after lunch before it lifted enough for us to explore further upriver in the dinghy. We didn’t actually find anything, so came back close to our anchorage and went ashore for a walk.

We followed several footpaths, but apart from coming out at the sailing club, every path led to a road in the middle of nowhere with no villages apparent, despite the original signposts. Unfortunately Pippin ripped open her ear again, possibly on barbed wire, and ended up being quite a gory mess. Despite me squeezing her ear to stop the bleeding, she kept shaking herself and reopening it. We cleaned her up as best we could in a small stream and when the bleeding seemed to have stopped, we headed back to Talia. Unfortunately, the little minx managed to open the wound again all over our bed and the seat cushions, so after cleaning up again, we had to keep her outside in the awning for several hours. She spent the night in her crate snuggled up in blankets, with me checking her regularly, but fortunately the cut stayed closed.

Sun 27 July
We motored back down the Percuil River and sailed back across to Falmouth under the genoa. When we stopped for a drink, we bumped into Steve and Barbara from Moomin, who were on a short break for their wedding anniversary, rather than staying on from the MacGregor Rally the previous weekend!

Falmouth

2008-07-24T17:16:00.004+01:00

23 July
Took Pippin for a long walk across the fields and along to the ferry crossing - she wasn't wildly enthusiastic about being on the lead the whole time, but there were lots of sheep about, and since she chases anything that moves, I wasn't about to let her loose!

We weren't in any particular rush as it's only another 20 miles or so to Falmouth and the tide wouldn't go with us until lunchtime. We called in at the short stay pontoon again to top up the water tanks and I nipped into town to grab some pasties and sticky buns for lunch on the move.

The passage was quite lumpy and we were quite grateful to finally round the headland and see the entrance to the harbour opening up in front of us. We arrived at low water and found an anchoring spot close in to the harbour wall in relatively shallow water in the hope that it would be somewhat protected from strong winds and lumpy swell. We hadn't counted on the fact that we are very close to every ferry, tourboat and fishing vessel with the area!

We will probably be here for a few days to rest and stock up before heading across to the Scillies. The weather doesn't look too good until the weekend and we don't fancy the crossing in rough seas and strong winds.

We headed into town to suss out supermarkets and laundry (doing smalls on the go is one thing, I am not about to tackle a kingsize quilt cover and bedsheet without significant mechanical assistance!) and on the way back, we saw Mike and Bobbie arrive on Hera! We popped around to say hello once they'd rafted onto another Mac, then left them to it.

Falmouth is a great mix of standard high street shops and lots of little boutique places so no doubt we'll have a proper wander around tomorrow when they're all open again. Pippin was fascinated by all the restaurants and spent most of her walk trying to dive into every takeaway and fish and chip shop along the main street!

24 July
Woke early but stayed on board until about 9:30 waiting for the harbour master to come around for his dues. Since he hadn't shown up by then, we headed ashore with the washing and staked out the marina laundrette for a couple of hours, taking it in turns to walk Pippin and wander round the shops.

When we got back, we set up the generator again and Mark fixed the fridge fan which had suddenly decided to stop working. Hopefully the fridge will be a bit more efficient now and we won't have to put the generator on quite so much. At least it's a quiet model - we can hardly hear it so we know we're not disturbing anyone else.

Lazy afternoon spent surfing the web and updating our blog - the connection is very slow so no pictures for now. We'll try to get them up soon!

Fowey

2008-07-24T16:46:00.007+01:00

Tue 22 July
The plan is to spend just one night here, then move on to Falmouth, with the aim of getting to the Scillies by the weekend. It was a fairly uneventful trip across - just 20 miles and we managed to sail most of the way - the sea was flat calm and if we'd had more wind, we would have gone straight to Falmouth, skipping Fowey altogether. As it was, the light winds meant we were only doing 3-4 knots most of the time. The forecast promised rain and fog but so far, we've not seen either and we're crossing our fingers that the good weather holds just a little bit longer.

We had to raft up to get on the short stay pontoon in order to top up our water tanks and buy more calor gas. Topping up the tanks proved to be somewhat tricky as the hosepipe wouldn't reach around the boat we were rafted on and our own hosepipe wasn't going to be long enough either. Since our water tanks are unlined, we cannot drink the water and just use it for washing and doing the dishes so we carry about 40 litres of drinking water in separate containers. In the end, we emptied all our jerry cans into the top of the tank, then carried them ashore to refill them.

Having swapped our empty gas cannister for a full one (£15) and paid for a mooring (£13.50) at the harbour office, we untied Talia and headed out to the visitors moorings. After half an hour of delicate manoeuvering between moored boats, we completely failed to find a free buoy and gave up in disgust. Instead, we motored further up the river to find the visitors pontoon opposite the china clay quay. There were a couple of free spaces so we quickly tied up, then suddenly spotted a boat we recognised cruising up the river right next to us! Mike and Bobby, on board Hera, a MacGregor 26X - we waved them over and they rafted on us for the night. We all went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant - the food was great but the service left a lot to be desired! Because we were delayed at the River Avon due to the bad weather, we missed the MacGregor Rally in Falmouth last weekend. Bobbie and Mike had stayed on after the rally, hence meeting them in Fowey.