I had been busy at work over the last fortnight but was keen to get out sailing again but Vicki wasn’t interested as she thought it would be to cold on the water, so I said I would go out alone on Saturday 8th.
The tide was dropping away fast as I got the dinghy down to the water. Not deep enough to lower the engine but deeper than wellies depth, so I rowed into deeper water and then lowered the engine. Getting out to Elektra it looked like it was going to be a nice day. I set about getting Elektra ready to leave the mooring, I have to be more ready when sailing alone, have the tiller pilot plugged in and ready to use.
I dropped the mooring at 1000hrs and motored her gently out of Gillan into Falmouth Bay and set all sail but almost no wind! I sailed around a bit at 1-2.5kts for a bit before giving up and motoring in towards Helford. We hadn’t been into the Helford River all summer, so it was nice just to doodle along and look at the yachts. I dropped anchor off Portnavas Creek at 1200hrs and put the kettle on for lunch.
After around 1.5hrs I pulled up the mainsail and pulled up Elektra’s anchor, she started getting a little close to a moored motor launch so before stowing I went back to the helm and turned her to starboard across the river before walking back to the bow to stow the anchor in locker. Then I motored Elektra back out down Helford River, in the narrows the tide was running in at about 3kts so a little slow going for a time. Once clear of the narrows I started sailing Elektra towards Durgan, this was good but when we tacked south back across the river the wind died off so I had to motor again. As we neared Mawgan Sheer the wind filled in again and we were sailing at 3-4kts. Almost sailing due east, I continued like this for a while before going about and heading back to Gillan. I picked up Elektra’s mooring at 1530hrs having logged 14nm in 4hrs.
Love Sailing 