After a lovely summer’s day in Fowey we were going to sail back to our favourite anchorage in the Precuil River to the southwest on Wednesday.
The forecast was for east force 4-5 and east force 4-6 west of the Dodman Point. We knew that the wind had been blowing since we got to Fowey and so knew the sea would be quite big but we thought with plenty of wind it would be a good sail.
The tidal stream would be with us from 1015-1615hrs and we cast off at 1105hrs, Vicki motored Elektra out of Fowey and l set just her genoa, at first Elektra was logging 5kts which was quite nice but when she slowed to 3.5kts so l pulled up the main with one reef and she picked up speed again to 5kts. From there until we were west of the Dodman the sea increased steadily to moderate/rough and Elektra speed 5-7kts it was great sailing. But off Gull Rock at about 1400hrs the wind just died away, the sails were useless in such sea conditions as Elektra started rolling quite savage in the 3/4 following sea! Only motoring the rest of the passage into shelter could get us out of this sea. It was a long hour into shelter and we were both glad to turn north in past St Anthony light house and calm waters at 1500hrs. We motored into the Precuil River and dropped anchor at 1540hrs having logged 22nm.
Love Sailing 