Rough Water And Wrong Winds

 Our time in the comfort and relative safety of Mylor Yacht Haven has come to an end.  We have enjoyed our winter berth there but it was never our intention to remain permanently in a marina environment.  We want to explore and stretch our horizons, and live closer to nature than the sanitised marina environments give.  Not that Mylor was devoid of nature and, as far as marinas go, Mylor is a much more relaxed place to spend a winter.  However, now that the sailing ‘season’ has begun, the atmosphere and the financial cost has changed, so it was time to move on.

 

The first task in this next stage was to get rid of our car.  Having owned a car for over thirty-five years this has been a significant mind shift for me.  Those of you who know me personally will know that I have always loved cars and that from the age of about twelve I have tinkered with, broken and fixed a variety of cars, both modern and classic.  But as I have said in my earlier blogs, one of the reasons for our change in lifestyle was to reduce the environmental impact of the way in which we live.  Therefore owning and driving a car had to come to an end.  Apart from that, moving a car as well as a boat in a nomadic way is a logistics challenge.  So the car is gone, and we now use public transport and foot power when we are on land.

 

The next task in hand is the minor issue of sailing Wendy Woo around Land’s End and on to Milford Haven in West Wales.  Bridget and I have poured over the charts and the almanac, and consulted half a dozen different weather forecasts to plan our passage.  We have considered sailing to the Isles of Scilly and on to Milford Haven, rounding Land’s End and anchoring in St Ives Bay before crossing the Bristol Channel, or sailing to Penzance/Newlyn then rounding Land’s End and striking out for the Welsh Coast.  Whichever option we chose we were facing a night passage and about twenty-six hours at sea.  The weather was also a major consideration, and wouldn’t you guess it, a prolonged spell of easterly winds were forecast to bring strong winds to the south west. 

We needed to wait for the winds to pass so we found a mid-river pontoon up the River Fal where we spent four nights alongside.  This gave us protection from the easterly winds and also a taste for what it will be like not being able to leave the boat for a prolonged period of time.  Water and power management loomed large in my mind but we impressed ourselves with how little water and power we used over the four day period and it made us realise how much we have taken for granted easy access to water and electricity.

 

We finally settled on a passage plan to leave Falmouth, head for Newlyn for a night and then round Land’s End and on to Milford Haven in a single leg. 

We booked a berth in Port Pendennis Marina for the night before we left so that we could restock our cupboards, fill our water tanks and charge our batteries.  That was Sunday.  The advice in the almanac was to leave Falmouth (Pendennis) about three hours after high tide to make the most of the ebb tide to take us around The Lizard and into Mount’s Bay.  This meant slipping our lines at around eight in the morning (quite respectable) and heading out of the marina.  The weather forecast for Monday was for Force 5-7 from the East/North-East but set to moderate as the day wore on.  The sea state was set for Moderate/Rough again settling to Moderate as the day progressed.  This wasn’t sounding too good but we decided that we would head out and if we felt that it was too much we would return to the pontoon we had been using for another night.

 

We lifted our sails in the Carrick Roads with a third reef in the mainsail and a reefed headsail and set our course to aim for The Lizard.  Another sailing boat was heading out from St Mawes ahead of us so we felt as though we weren’t the only mad people around.  Once we cleared the mouth of the Fal and were in open water we really started to get bounced around.  We were sailing at about five knots but we were side on to a very choppy and lumpy sea.  This was not very comfortable at all!  We had to compromise on our heading in order to ride the waves with the downside of prolonging our passage.  It was at this point that Bridget started to feel unwell.  We carried on a little longer, with Bridget seeing more of the sea over the side of the boat than the coastline and so we faced a decision – do we carry on or turn back.  We had been out for about two hours on an seven hour passage.  If we turned back we would have been out for four hours and ended up back where we started.  At least by carrying on we were making progress, and the forecast was for improving conditions.  WW was being thrown about a fair bit, but she was coping well (better than us if the truth be known) so we carried on.  I put the engine on to help us push through the water and we were cruising at seven knots.  Bridget was harnessed to the boat so that I could concentrate on helming and we pushed on round The Lizard.  I could now see Newlyn some seventeen miles distant, the sun was out and the sea was starting to calm down so we were through the worst of it.  Bridget started to pick up a bit and took over the helm as I called up Newlyn Harbour on the VHF.  Thankfully they had space for us.

 

Newlyn Harbour is primarily a fishing port and is a stark contrast to yacht marinas.  The available berth was a very tight turn in, and not on our favoured side, so I mucked up the approach a little.  Trying to manoeuvre WW around the large fishing boats was difficult and I was struggling to get close enough to the pontoon for Bridget to step ashore.  Thankfully another yacht had come in just before us and they could see we were having difficulty so they took our lines and secured us to the pontoon.  Coincidentally they were the boat that left St Mawes ahead of us that morning.  A big thank you to Fi and Chris of ‘Pyewacket’ for their assistance.

 

So here we are in Newlyn.  We had planned to stay one night and then continue our journey but after the beating we had taken we felt it prudent to have a rest day.  Also, there were a couple of maintenance jobs to attend to.  The stern gland was leaking a bit too much so needed adjustment and one of the bottle screws on the rigging had come loose so I needed to wire-lock them in place.  Of course now the weather has cheated us again!  We are expecting Force 5-6 Northerly winds through the night which is when we would have been half way across the Bristol Channel, trying to head North, so we have decided to hold up here until that passes.  There are worse places to hide from weather than Newlyn Harbour. 

As I type this we are getting the boat ready to leave in the morning and hopefully we’ll be around Land’s End by early afternoon and heading in the right direction once again.  We'll soon be able to raise our Welsh Flag on the correct side of Wendy Woo for the first time.  Till then, keep safe.