24. Pasties, croissants and sunshine

We marked our return to Falmouth with Cornish pasties and almond croissants and wearing shorts rather than fleeces in the warm sunshine.  We got all the washing done, or rather Debbie got the washing done, and had dinner at the Chain Locker, mussels for David and halloumi salad for Debbie, both excellent.  We had a 10.00 start on Wednesday morning to catch the tide for a short, 20 mile sail to Fowey.  

The wind was a pleasant south westerly, allowing us to sail from Black Rock at the mouth of Falmouth harbour until we took the sails down in Fowey harbour, trickier than we thought due to the amount of traffic in the harbour.  

The harbour patrol launch found us a berth alongside a pontoon in Pont Pill and we launched the dinghy for the first time in ages to go ashore for ice creams.

Thursday morning the forecast was again south or south west force 3 to 4, which should have given us another reach to Plymouth.  We left Fowey in the company of Roy Beswick in Ellie Too, another Starlight 35, he was heading for the River Yealm.  

The wind was actually more south easterly, making it a beat.  We were pretty evenly matched first of all until Roy did a long tack out to sea and we opted to stay inshore, hoping for a lift along the shore line.  When Roy tacked back on to starboard he was miles in front, which put an end to our impromptu race!  We had to revert to the engine eventually anyway as we had an invite to dinner with our good friend Jenny King that evening.  We worked out that we needed to average 4.5 knots if we were to get to Plymouth in time for a shower before dinner, which we could not achieve if we continued tacking so we furled the genoa and motor sailed, as did most of the other yachts heading east.
Approaching Rame Head we noticed cloud masking the top of the head, it gradually got mistier then very suddenly the visibility dropped to a boat length!  

We were very grateful for our chart plotter and class A AIS ( meaning that our automatic identification system transmitted our position and course as well as receiving information from others).  There was a lot of radio chatter as boats made others aware of their positions.  

We picked up a little flotilla of yachts with non transmitting AIS, following us as they knew that others could pick us up, all a bit scary!  Approaching the breakwater the fog lifted as suddenly as it had come down and we were back in bright sunshine again as if the fog had never happened.

We were moored in the Yacht Haven in time for tea and fruit cake and showers before dinner and also to say hello to Dave Birch, now living on his yacht and working for Princess motor yachts.
Dinner at Jennie’s was a very pleasant affair. Also at dinner were Jennie’s daughter, Christina, and Bones and Ana Black.  After being involved with dinghy sailing for some time we found that we had plenty of friends in common.  Bones and Ana now have a Bowman 57 ketch, in which they have done the ARC a number of times and have just completed the world cruiser rally.  They run the boat as a business, taking paying guests on their journeys.  If we are to do any longer distance sailing we either need a bigger boat or do it on someone else’s boat, so there’s food for thought!  Anyway we got on very well and had a really nice evening.
Our final sail of the trip was 40 miles back to Torquay, leaving at 10.00 on Friday morning meant we should catch a favourable tide all the way back and the forecast SW wind promised a good sail back.  As it turned out the wind was just about strong enough but accompanied by a nasty swell which set us rolling and shook all the wind out of the sails so we had to motor.  This continued until Start Point when the sea flattened out and we could run up the coast to Berry Head with the genoa boomed out on the spinnaker pole.

making a relaxed sail for the last 20 miles, arriving back in our old berth in Torquay Marina at 17.30, half an hour in front of our eta.

We had one last night on board, eating one of our standby meals of filled pasta followed by a drink at the yacht club, by which time Richard and Lucas had appeared and joined us for a drink on board before going to sort the house out.  They had been staying there for a few weekends with friends and needed to do some sorting out of beds etc. before we came home!  They prepared a 3 course dinner on Saturday evening to welcome us back.  A most enjoyable end to the trip!
The final post for this voyage will be a few statistics, which will take a few days to compile.