It had been a wounderful few days but now with rain forecasted for Saturday we decided to sail back to Gillan. There wasn’t any hurry, HW was 1636hrs, so after a lazy start and a brunch I lifted our anchor and Vicki started motoring Elektra towards the sea at 1330hrs. While Vicki was at the helm I pulled up the main with one reef and once out past the mooring in St Mawes Harbour, I pulled out the genoa and we sailed towards Black Rock.
The wind was south-southwest force 4 and with an incoming tide it was clear we we had a lot of leeway as we were crossing the entrance to the Carrick Roads. Vicki was aming to pass south of Black Rock and didn’t like my surggestion that we needed to pass north of it. The yacht ahead of Elektra continued on same line as we had been on but didn’t make it and had to go about. The next problem looked like Pendennis Point, there was a Twister in front but Vicki had Elektra pointing better and it looked possible we wouldn’t have to tack. The Twister couldn’t make it and tacked as we passed her by, I still wasn’t sure we would make it past the point on this port tack but the tide eased and somehow Elektra made it by just 60ft from the lee shore and on out into Falmouth Bay. From there we continued on over to just south of Swanpool beach before tacking onto a southeasterly direction starboard tack. With wind and tide against we didn’t seem to be making much ground, there was a small yacht race going on ahead of us on this tack but by the time we arrived they had moved off into wind, after about 1/2hr we tacked again, this time heading for Rosemullion Head. Then another southeasterly tack, followed by our last tack which took into the Helford River just off the Dennis Head. At which point we rolled the genoa and motored into Gillan Harbour, picking up our mooring at 1530hrs having logged 10nm.
Vicki and I both started getting Elektra ready to leave and within an hour we were in the dinghy heading for the shore and home by 1700hrs.
Love Sailing 