Having been home for 11 days, l was looking forward to being aboard again, but the weather was still looking unsettled. With Monday strong north westerly followed by a calmer Tuesday and then strong southwest winds.
I liked the idea of strong winds to sail across Falmouth Bay, but once there l would need sheltered anchorage. Then over the following weekend l have a SSOA rally in Fowey. Then l was planning to try for Salcombe for a few days following that if weather permitted.
My plan had been to get away from home early, but l didn’t sleep in the night between 0100-0400hrs, so having gone back to sleep l then didn’t wake up until 0830hrs, so l didn’t get down to St Anthony until 1030hrs. I launched the dinghy and transferred the stores from car to dinghy, before parking the car.
Pushing off the dinghy and motoring out heavily loaded to Elektra, there didn’t seem much wind as l transferred the stores to Elektra’s cockpit, removed the outboard to pushpit and attached the dinghy to the davit lines and climbed aboard myself. I felt like it might rain so l moved all the stores into the cabin as quickly as possible. Spending the next half hour stowing everything away.
Then it was time to get Elektra ready to leave. Just before leaving l took the mooring strop off the bow roller and moved the anchor from the locker to the bow roller ready for later. Then back to the cockpit to to start the engine, switch on the instruments and untie the tiller. Back to the bow to let the mooring go, once back in the cockpit l motored her away from the moorings. I would have cut though between Carcroc and Dennis Head but another yacht was coming in though the gap, so l went out around the Cardinal Buoy.
As l approached the Cardinal, l started to set her genoa to starboard and rounded the buoy and stopped the engine. With the full genoa deployed she was too much for the tiller pilot to handle. So having set the sail, l took the helm and Elektra set off across Helford River entrance at over 5kts on her ear, this was exciting l thought until Elektra rounded up and l had to pull in the first reef. According to the wind instrument, it was the top end of force 5, Elektra was certainly tough to handle, but l did let out a couple more rolls of genoa just to keep her going.
Falmouth Bay was a little cluttered with anchored shipping and a little detour was needed to go around the bow of 2 of them, before bearing away in towards St Mawes. We covered the 5nm to the way point in under an hour, it had been a great sail. Sailing into St Mawes l needed to know the engine would start before getting in, to close! So reached into the cabin and started it. Then rolled away the genoa and motored into the Precuil River, it was 1.5hrs before low water, Place was already dry so l continued up river to our favourite anchorage and dropped anchor with 0.4m under the keel.
After the packing away jobs, l went to sleep in the cockpit. It’s a fact of any extreme sport without a GoPro or similar, when it gets exciting no photos are taken!
Love Sailing 