The forecast over the weekend had been wet but the weather had turned out to be great. My wife Vicki and I had lots of homework to do and with the wet forecast had stayed home, now kicking ourselves having let a good weekend go, we decided to go sailing on Monday.
The plan had been to sail to Coverack for lunch but motoring out into the bay there was no wind, so I suggested the cruising chute (this we had bought last season with a snuffler) but we didn’t have the weather to fly that season. Our last yacht had a cruising chute but this was the first time I had used a snuffler! It took a bit of working out before I got the sail set well. But once I was happy Elektra was logging 3kts SOG against the tide not towards Coverack.
After logging 9nm in 3hrs I snuffled the chute and we anchored off Portscatho for lunch, after a stop of 2hrs we picked up the anchor again and headed for home, we shot out the bay at 5kts only to get becalmed about 1/2 mile off Portscatho, so we started motoring, then the wind picked up again so we could sail. We sailed for another 5 miles until we were halfway across Falmouth Bay and the wind died again, so we motored back to our mooring in Gillan Harbour. We picked up our punt from the mooring and motored up Carne Creek to anchor (east wind forecasted for next week).
We had logged 18nm over 4.5hrs, it was great to try the cruising chute out for the first time, it had been a lovely day to be out on the water.
Love Sailing 