With the weather still being wet and windy the weekend had passed by but Monday looked good for a day sail, it was 1100hrs before I climbed aboard Elektra after 10 days since I was last there.
The fresh water leak I thought I had solved hadn’t worked after all and I had to bale out 2 gallons from under the floor below the companion way steps, where this water was coming from was a mystery I am yet to solve but that’s for another day.
I came out to go sailing, after checking on a few other things I was eventually able to go out sailing. Without starting the engine I attached the dinghy to the mooring and dropped the mooring at 1230hrs. The forecast was for southwest force 4-5 decreasing later to southerly force 4. The wind had been blasting out of Gillan so I only set the genoa and headed for the gap between Car Crock and the Dennis Head on about half the genoa, soon rolling out all the sail. Sailing east to the Nare Point and then southeast towards the Manacle Buoy, Elektra was doing 5kts SOG against a 1.5kt tide.
As Elektra neared the Manacle Buoy the swells from the previous blows were very noticeable, 2-3m high but very long, the horizon was disappearing quite a lot but it wasn’t a rough sea. Off the buoy I turned Elektra east again for more of a beam reach. It was a very pleasant sail, after a while I thought, I haven’t ever been this far east on this latitude, about 8nm east of Manacle Buoy. Over the last 18 seasons we had only done coastal cruising as far east as Poole and west as far as The Isles of Scilly, never crossed the English Channel to France. I was beginning to see the possibilities of cruising further away after retirement.
Enough of this dreaming I got to think about going home for dinner, I turned Elektra northwest towards the Nare Point. A nice broad reach to the Nare Point and then close on the wind into Gillan until loosing the wind altogether of Car Crock east cardinal buoy where I rolled the genoa and started the engine.
Once back on the mooring we had covered 15nm over 3.5hrs.
Love Sailing 