On Tuesday the forecast was wet and windy, heavy rain in the morning but had cleared away by 1100hrs, but the wind continued to blow. We had arranged to meet up with a friend “Richard” at the Mount Edgecombe pub. Richard’s yacht was in King Point Marina, just across the river Tamar in England. Our outboard had been playing up all week, I had stripped down and cleaned the carb in Fowey which didn’t make it run any better. I put a new spark plug in at Torquay, which was better, but choke was still needed for it to run without stopping! So I wasn’t over comfident that it would run well going ashore. I was was right, it still wasn’t running without choke, but it got us ashore into wind. In the pub, I ordered drinks and sent “Richard” an email, richard replied saying he was on the ferry coming over now. After food, drink and great chat with Richard we all headed back, Richard helped me with the dinghy down to the waters edge, we said our goodbyes and when on our way.
The outboard started first pull and we got 20 yards off the beach and it died, and wouldn’t start again! The problem with dingies is, where do the passages sit when they have to be rowed! Either on the transom next to the engine which isn’t working or it’s on the bow which is where you are likely to get a wet bottom. Vicki chose the bow and I started rowing, all was good because we were getting blown down wind. The problem came once we got around the point into the shelter, no helping wind but somehow a strong tide running against, I was rowing hard but not making much headway, I am glad to say it wasn’t too far and we got back to Elektra in the end.
The forecast was for a wet and windy weekend to come, looking at the weather forecasts, there wasn’t anyway we would be heading west before Monday 9th or Tuesday 10th of June apart from a short possible weather window early on Wednesday the 4th, but the wind was due to get stronger in the afternoon.
So we planed to leave first light on the 4th. I lifted the outboard onto Elektra’s pushpit and lifted the dinghy onto her davits. Vicki and I removed the cockpit encloser and stowed, and we got ready to move to Cawsands for an easier get away the following morning. With the new insturment problems we don’t have a working depth sounder, so l can only work out anchor depth by adding HW hight to chartplotter depth. So we have been anchoring in deeper water than normal and having to use our hand windless to lift the amount of weight off the bottom, this takes much longer than hand over hand as I do normally. The anchor came up as normal these days with a great lump of the bottom, so as Vicki motored Elektra out, I cleaned the anchor and stowed. We motored out though the “Bridge” and turned into the weather to head for Cawsands, it wasn’t very nice out there, but the closer we got to Cawsands the better it became until we dropped anchor half an hour after leaving Barn Pool.
Love Sailing 