With a SSOA rally arranged in Fowey over the weekend. I was looking for the weather to go. Thursday was showing southwest force 4 gusting 6, then southwest 4 gusting 5 in the middle of the day until it picked up again later. I went to bed the night before wondering what it would be like next morning. The tide was running my way from 0700 to 1300hrs.
Next morning, having got out before dawn and had breakfast before Elektra wasn’t floating, she didn’t lift off until 0630hrs and l readied Elektra for moving and pulled up her anchor at 0710hrs and motored her slowly out towards the mooring, just before the AIS alarm goes off, l knocked her out of gear and go into the cabin to turn it off. Narrowly missing a moored yacht l my return to the cockpit, l still have no idea why owners think it’s a good idea to leave their AIS on when they aren’t aboard 😕 maybe they want their yachts to be hit on the mooring?
Motoring on out of the moorings and south out of the Carrick Roads and round Zone Point before setting sail. Visibility was poor, about 3nm, could see the Roseland but no other land so followed the chart plotter line into the gloom, with drizzle blowing from behind l needed to have the wash boards in. I set up the tiller pilot and it seemed to be coping well. There wasn’t as much wind as l was expecting, but Elektra was logging a steady 4.5kts, the wind instrument was telling me force 4, 12-13kts, of course going down wind felt more like 8-9kts. But Elektra was sailing so not burning any diesel, so slow but sure. I had my log sheet in the cockpit for hourly records, so l didn’t have to keep taking the wet into the cabin.
Keeping up the same sort of speed over ground for most of the passage until 1030hrs when the wind died away to force 3 and over the next 3/4hr Elektra only logged 1.75nm, which is when l started her engine, rolled away the genoa and motored, coming in Fowey entrance at 1200hrs having logged 21.5nm. By 1230hrs Elektra was moored on a visitor pontoon up river and a total of 23nm for the day. It hadn’t been the fast passage to Fowey l was expecting, but at least l didn’t have to motor Elektra all the way.
With 4 of the rally yachts arrived before the end of the day, after we had all sorted ourselves out and had dinner, they all came over to Elektra for a chat in the evening.
Love Sailing 