We had been aboard 4 lovely sunny days, it had been great but now the forcast had changed to heavy rain at the weekend. We decided it was time to go home, but with the strong east winds of the last few days there would be a big easterly swell running and with our seasonal swing mooring open to east wind we would need to take Elektra up onto her Carne gale proof mooring. The earliest we could get in there was 1730hrs. The tides had been and were still some of the biggest ranges of the year, plus with the high pressure the low tides were lower than perdicted. In the Precuil River the tide on Thursday went out lower than we had ever seen before.
On the Thursday night, when Elektra settled down onto a hard patch of bottom under her starboard keel, we went to bed with a nasty list to port! (In some ways drying out can give calm to a wild night at anchor but it also sometimes has a down side!) But sometime in the early hours she floated off again. When I got out at 0800hrs, I pulled up Elektra’s anchor and let her get blown out into deeper water before dropping anchor again and checking new transits. I like this new Rocna anchor as there isn’t any need for power to set this anchor. We had decided to go down to St Mawes for a pub lunch over low water and didn’t want Elektra to be high and dry on our return later. We lazed around in the hazy sunshine durring the rest of the morning and then at 1230hrs set off down to St Mawes in the dinghy. When we returned to Elektra at 1500hrs she was aground but still had water around her, we climbed aboard and waited half an hour for her to float before getting ready to leave.
At 1605hrs I pulled up her anchor and while I was stowing into the anchor locker, Vicki started to motor her back down the Precuil River, slowly at first because there wasn’t much depth. But we had to put on the power as there was about 1.5kts of incoming tidal stream to push against. There wasn’t much wind and once out past Black Rock a big easterly swell running. We just continued to motor Elektra back to Gillan and on into Carne Creek, picking up her gale proof mooring at 1730hrs having logged 7nm.
On the Sunday evening after the heavy rain over the weekend, l moved Elektra back into Gillan Harbour onto her seasonal swing mooring ready for the next time we could use her. But l have a week of work to do first.
Love Sailing 