We had been in Scilly for over 3 weeks before looking for the weather to return to the mainland. With a weekend of east winds the Scilly silly season had arrived, St Mary’s Harbour was full and Porth Loo to the North had 27 yachts at anchor. We thought the time had come to leave. But the weather wasn’t looking good, now blowing east wind the forecast for next week was strong southwest winds lt’s not a hop down the coast, crossing from Scilly to Lizard Point is like being in the Atlantic ocean and anything stronger than force 5 is going to mean very big waves.
It was the morning of Sunday the 13th of July that l saw a possible weather window for the crossing. With the forecast of the easterly winds to die down and move to southeast force 5-6, then south force 4, then southwest force 3-5 before picking up on Monday. I spoke to Vicki when she awoke, and we agreed to leave around lunchtime.
It was 1120hrs when l pulled up Elektra’s anchor and as l stowed Vicki motored Elektra out of Porth Loo and south then southeast out of St Mary’s Sound into a head wind. It was rough once out of the Sound for about 10nm but slowly eased as we went east, to start with we were motor sailing to keep her going though the waves, then as time went on the wind became Southerly force 3-4. Then south-southwest and very light and so we were motoring. But slowly it picked up from the southwest, we could of been sailing but we continued to motor sail as we knew we would be arriving after dark and the less night time sailing the better especially with all the crab pot markers around.
At around 1900hrs the wind instrument stopped working, but the next time l looked it was working again. I wrote in the log at 1920hrs by then we had a southwest force 3-4 and we were 3nm west of the Lizard WP having logged 42nm. At 1930hrs the chart plotter went blank, it was then l noticed smoke coming from the cabin! And quickly went to investigate. I opened the engine box and discovered fire🔥
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