The forecast for the coming few days and over the weekend was poor, with the centre of a Low being in Biscay we would have easterly winds and rain. So we planned to head home before hand. The tide wouldn’t be high enough to get into Carne mooring until 1700hrs, so we went to St Mawes by dinghy for milk from coop and lunch at the Victory Inn. On our return we slowly got Elektra ready to leave, the wind in the Precuil River seemed strong and gusty, I decided to head home across Falmouth Bay on just Elektra’s genoa.
Having motored Elektra back out down the Precuil River and out past St Mawes, the genoa seemed at first to be plenty of sail as Elektra was logging 4.5-5kts SOG against the incoming tide, but once out into Falmouth Bay the wind eased and Elektra slowed. But this was short lived as she moved south away from the shelter of Pendennis Point, by which time SOG had increased to 5kts again. She covered the first 5nm in one hour. Once inside Gillan Harbour we had to stop and lower the dinghy from davits before we could enter Carne Creek. I took the helm to take Elektra in and up the channel with only 0.3-0.5 showing under her keel before Vicki to the helm again and turned Elektra over the bank towards the mooring buoy which I pickup with the boat hook. This mooring hadn’t been used since May and the lines were covered in seaweed which made a mess of the foredeck and cockpit, Elektra was just floating with 0.0 showing on sounder. We set about getting packed up and getting Elektra ready to leave to go ashore, this took an hour. When we were ready we loaded the dinghy and motored ashore to St Anthony beach, unloaded the dinghy into the pickup and headed for home.
Love Sailing 