Well, we now find ourselves moored up in Mylor Yacht Harbour
near Falmouth. But how did we get
here? My last blog entry was nearly five
months ago when we were on our drying out mooring in Dartmouth, so something
must have happened!
We launched Wendy Woo off the covered slip back in April but
without her masts. She was on a drying
mooring which meant that we needed beaching legs for her. We had a pair made from Douglas fir and
bolted through the topsides. We found
them to be particularly cumbersome.
Whenever we wanted to leave the mooring we would have to haul them on
board. They would be covered in filthy
sticky mud that made a mess of our newly painted foredeck. Added to that, because the creek is tidal we
were limited as to when we could leave the mooring and for how long. We began to realise that the effort involved
in actually getting out of the creek was putting us off even trying. We desperately wanted to be able to come and
go at will, so whilst waiting for our new main mast to be made we started
looking at alternative berths and moorings.
But I’m jumping the gun here, there’s a lot more to talk about before I
come to the actual move away from Dartmouth.
First, a few words about our mooring in Dartmouth. As I said, we had a drying mooring which
meant that we were limited by tides and the need for beaching legs to hold us
up when the tide was out. We were on Old
Mill Creek, settling onto the mud twice a day.
The upside to this was the abundance and variation of wildlife we
encountered. The creek was full of grey
mullet and sea bass, which attracted seals and cormorants. When the tide was out we were visited by
several different types of birds, including herons, little egrets, oyster
catchers and black-backed gulls to name a few.
I have to say though that the highlight was being visited by
kingfishers. They would swoop and dive
around the boats, often settling on our mooring lines briefly before darting
off again. Unfortunately they were very
camera shy, but sometimes you just have to be in the moment rather than reaching for technology to capture something so beautiful.
Despite the difficulties with our mooring we did get
ourselves out a few times without the rig in order to practice boat
handling. Whilst I have a reasonable
amount of sailing experience it has been on more modern, smaller fin-keeled
boats and Bridget had never sailed before, so we needed to become confident and
competent at handling Wendy Woo. We came
up with a good system that enabled us to slip our lines and recover them when
we returned, and Bridget soon became adept at handling the boathook and picking
up our stern lines when coming back in.
We motored up and down the River Dart looking for pontoons to practice
alongside and generally getting used to how well WW moved.
Although she is big (42 feet LOA) and heavy
(20 tons) she manoeuvres very well, at least when moving forwards (she’s not so
easily steered in reverse). One incident
worthy of note however was when we came back to our mooring one evening. The approach to our slot was absolutely spot
on and I had WW lined up whilst Bridget leant out to pick up the lines. I selected reverse to take off a little speed
and applied some power, only for WW to surge forwards at an alarming rate. Before I could do anything we had hid, and
mounted, the pontoon and come to a rest with the bow high and dry. I immediately killed the engine and started
to panic. I knew that the tide was
falling and I was worried that we would get stuck. Thankfully we still had hold of our stern
lines so I was able to pull us back off the pontoon and get her moored up
safely. More importantly, no one was
hurt, no one else’s property was damaged and there was only minor damage to
WW’s stem post. As to why it happened,
when I investigated I found that the gear selector cable linkage had come apart
and so the transmission was stuck in forwards.
You can bet that I check this linkage regularly now! I have also fitted a stainless steel keel
band to the stem post to protect the stem from any rubbing against pontoons or
debris in the water.
When we embarked on this change of life we had no idea how
difficult it would be to find a mooring where the ‘authorities’ are happy with
people living on board full time. We
wanted to be upfront about our plans rather than trying to sneak under the
radar and several times we were told that a particular place had room for us
only to swiftly change their minds when we told them of our circumstances. We were starting to get quite worried that we
wouldn’t be able to find a place to hide out the worst of the winter
weather. However, we did finally find
that Mylor Yacht Harbour near Falmouth were happy with us over-wintering
there. Furthermore, Cowes on the Isle of
Wight were also happy to take us, so we had two options to work with. We started making passage plans for heading
either east or west from Dartmouth, with our favoured option being Cowes (owing
to it being much cheaper). The problem
with heading for Cowes from Dartmouth is getting across Lyme Bay and around the
Bill of Portland with the best tidal flow.
This, combined with our restrictions of tides on the creek would have
seen us leaving Dartmouth in the dark at about four in the morning. Also, Lyme Bay offered us no ports of refuge
if we ended up in trouble. With the
winds in the east and a two-day break in the weather we made the decision to
head for Mylor. We planned a two-day
sail stopping overnight in Plymouth. Of
course, as luck would have it, once we made that decision the winds swung
around to come from the west! We ended
up motor-sailing most of the way, pushing into a pretty lumpy sea, to get to
our destination. We could have tacked up
the wind but I was anxious to get to Mylor in daylight. WW looked after us well, averaging 5-6 knots
all the way and we finally moored up alongside the visitor’s pontoon around
five in the afternoon.
Since arriving here we have had a lot of very strong winds
buffeting us from the north. It also
seems to have rained incessantly and so we have found several leaks around the
boat. Captain Tolley’s Creeping Crack
Cure is being put to good use! I have
also filled in the beaching leg holes and primed them, but I need to wait for
some dry weather to put the topcoats on.
WW is currently sporting a large grey patch on each side, spoiling her
overall good looks. She has attracted a
number of favourable comments and we have noted another couple of Hillyard’s in
the harbour, so she is in good company.
We now need the weather to ease up so that we can go and practice our
sailing on the beautiful Carrick Roads.
Till next time………………
