With a chance of a day sail on Sunday 28th April, I needed to move Elektra from her gale proof/east wind mooring in Carne Creek on the HW at 0830hrs. I overslept and it was 0900hrs before I was launching the dinghy from St Anthony beach. Motoring out to Elektra I could see the tide was already falling. I climbed aboard, opened up, started her engine and switched on her instruments. I made off the dinghy to her stern cleat and untied the tiller. The depth under the keel was showing 0.0, so I went up to the bow and made off the mooring joining line to the the pick up loop before drooping, then flaking out the line, the other end of the line I attached to her stern mooring strop. We a little thrust of reverse, I started reversing Elektra out into the channel before dropping the stern mooring line over the side. I needed reverse because the creek bottom is higher just inside the entrance and with 0.0 under the keel showing on the depth, I didn’t want it to get any shallower! Elektra reacts slowly to the helm in reverse but I am happy to do this without any other boats arround. Over the channel with 0.1 under the keel, I give the engine a blast of forward to stop her and then a bit more to get her moving forward down the channel, getting deeper 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 to the narrows between Carne Creek and Gillan Harbour, once in the narrows the depth is 1.5m and when I picked up Elektra’s seasonal swing mooring, one of the deepest in Gillan Harbour, the depth is showing 5.5m under the keel, here she still floats in 1.5m at LW springs.
On her mooring I got Elektra ready to go sailing, attached the dinghy to the mooring buoy, unwrapped the main and pulled it up with one reef, got the tiller pilot out and set ready to use. I had left the engine running but I didn’t need it when I dropped the mooring, Elektra turned across the wind and was already sailing when I got back into the cockpit, so I leaned forward and turned it off before pulling out all the genoa.
The forecast was for north force 4-5 and west force 4 later, once out crossing the Helford River entrance the wind was westerly force 3-4 gusting 5, so I headed across Falmouth Bay towards the Carrick Roads, logging 4.5kts SOG. If the wind had been more steady I would have continued with this amount of sail but in the gusts Elektra was rounding up, so I pulled the first reef into the genoa and things got better without any speed reduction. After passing the mouth of the Helford the wind was northwesterly, with the same wind speed the tiller pilot could just about cope except in the gusts when Elektra rounded up, it was nice to be out sailing again.
Going in to the roads past Black Rock the wind never died as it normally dose here and once of Falmouth Harbour increassed so much that even I had a problem holding her on coarse, I was thinking the St Mawes ferry and Elektra were going to be close but with the extra wind gusts, I could point her a lot higher and go around her stern! Once passed Falmouth the wind eased a bit and Elektra sailed north to St Just in Roseland before we needed to tack. Having turned onto the cross tack, Elektra was getting pushed south by the out going tide and so halfway across we tacked again and headed north towards Turnaware Point, as we approched the point, I started to think about pulling down the main without Vicki at the helm. So I decided 2hrs after leaving Gillan and before we got north of Turnaware to pull down and packed away the main while Elektra drifted southeast in the northwest wind, having packed the main I decided to just sail back to Gillan with all of her genoa out. Elektra being a mast head rig, her genoa is 2/3rds of her sail area and she sails very well on just this sail alone.
Elektra now speeding up with the remainder of the out going tide, she was logging 6.5kts at times, this was a more relaxed sail and I sat on the pushpit seats and enjoyed it. About St Just in Roseland a Westerly Konsort turned around and headed our way, I was interested because with their reefed main and reefed genoa there couldn’t catch Elektra, in fact Elektra was faster! But I think they may have ajusted their sails because they speeded up and came closer. After 2nm at Black Rock they had drawn up level, where I turned Elektra slightly for Gillan and we sailed apart again. After another 3nm they managed to get past Elektra’s bow then turned towards August Rock as I sailed Elektra on towards Gillan. I started her engine and rolled away her genoa by Car Crock east cardinal buoy, then motored Elektra into her mooring past a few anchored yachts. I picked up the mooring having logged 17.5nm in 3.75hrs.
Love Sailing 