2022 - First Leg - Portishead to Penzance
Around Britain – Year 3 – Portishead to Ramsgate –
2022.
Preparation.
Preparation for year three had begun in earnest
last year (2021), but because of more Covid restrictions we postponed the third
stage of our adventure for a further year.
All the little things to do before you set off;
checking engine filters, fuel, water, electrics, and electronics, all needed to
be proved.
Being in Portishead for nearly three years gave me
enough time to attend to a variety of items that had needed repairing or
replacing; renewing hull Port mirror films, repairing some of the head’s
woodwork, cleaning the engine intercooler, replacing the life-raft. Also, the running rigging; the sheets, the
reefing lines, the mooring lines, and all the odd lengths of rope all washed,
three sets of bedding per cabin all washed and ironed. Restocking of in-date pyrotechnics, tinned food,
and medicines. Sorting and stowing all the charts needed for this stage of our
journey. I was bound to have forgotten
something.
Most of these were done with the luxury of time at
home.
Day 1 - 1st June – Portishead to Watchet – 32
miles.
The problem with the North Coast of Somerset, Devon
and Cornwall is the lack of harbours that can accommodate Lunar Sea with a long
fin keel and 2m draft. Apart from
Bristol up the River Avon and the Welsh ports of Cardiff and Swansea, there are
only, Portishead, Watchet and Padstow.
All of which we had planned to visit, but all of which can only be
entered at High Water, plus and minus two hours. Therefore, careful planning is needed to be
done to safely travel between these.
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| Leaving Portishead |
Consequently, after a trip of 32 miles from
Portishead to Watchet it would mean hanging about for a couple of hours outside
Watchet before there was enough water at the entrance to be able to enter its
harbour. This meant at least a 6.5m rise
above Chart Datum to get across the 4m high mud bank at the entrance. In any case, the tidal gate into the harbour,
will only open at 3m over the bar which keeps water levels up in the harbour.
The harbour has been and is being continually
dredged at High Water until the gate is closed again which is very slowly
getting rid of the mud – a contract that is likely to take six years! In fact, when we did enter the harbour, we
touched the mud just off the hammerhead on ‘C’ pontoon, but that caused no
problems.
We were sorry to leave Portishead. It had been the
home of Lunar Sea for nearly three years, and we had had some lovely visits
around the area. The Marina and staff
had been excellent.
The trip from Portishead, for this years’ adventure, thankfully went without a hitch. We made use of the, at times four knots, tidal streams and briefly tried to sail, but in the end, we had time on our side so ran the engine at lower revs. to reduce our waiting time at Watchet.
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| Sailing - just |
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| Two Ancient Mariners |
It was a very satisfying first trip for Lunar Sea
and her crew.
Day 2 – 2nd June – Watchet to Clovelly –
47 miles.
The passage to Padstow would be an 84 miles trip. This would mean an overnight trip and as we
tend now to prefer easy fair weather sailing it seemed sensible to split the
distance and anchor in the bay just outside Clovelly for the night in Clovelly
Roads. This meant that we could anchor
whenever we arrived in this very sheltered bay, but more importantly we could
leave whenever we wanted to and be able to time it for our arrival at Padstow the
next day when we needed a tidal gate.
We left the absolutely delightful Watchet at High
Water which gave us a favourable tide for six hours. Again, we weren’t in a particular hurry and
after another stress-free trip along this mainly rugged coast, anchored in
about 8m of water. The tidal range was just under 5m. The anchorage was glorious about 3 cables
from Clovelly and its harbour, although I had a needless worry about the change
in tidal current during the night at 4am which came to nothing. The stars during the night were awesome in
the dark clear skies.
Day 3 – 3rd June – Clovelly to Padstow –
40 miles.
We picked up our anchor at 09:00 without a hitch,
which I was very thankful for as when it was dropped, it felt like it had set
in rock.
It was a lovely sunny day with little to no wind
until later when we approached Padstow’s River Camel. Then it was on the nose – what else? We had made some great progress thanks to the
favourable tide, so we allowed ourselves a slight detour to have a look at the
rugged Tintagel from the sea with reminders of ‘Poldark’. However, we still got the entrance to Padstow
the River Camel estuary about two hours early for the tidal gate opening, so we
anchored just outside the infamous ‘Doom Bar’ until we could make our way into
Padstow. The inner harbour has a tidal
gate which nominally opens two hours either side of high water. We entered an hour and a half before as they
opened the gate and rafted alongside a large motor cruiser, the Resolution Lady,
in the early evening.
We had arrived in Padstow on the Friday of the Platinum
Jubilee Weekend. The harbour was heaving
with people, presumably mostly holiday makers.
It is a shame that the beauty of this lovely harbour is spoilt by this
amount of people that come here essentially for this beauty – touches of
Broadstairs perhaps? Luckily, these
numbers gradually dwindled over the next few days we were here. We did take part in the blowing of the horns
at midday on the Saturday as part of the Jubilee Celebrations – all very colourful
in the harbour with nearly all the boats flying flags of one sort or another.
Lunar Sea in Padstow 
Approaches to Padstow Harbour at Low Water
Day 6/7 – 6th/7th June – Padstow
to Penzance or Newlyn – 60 miles.
My son Andrew arrived in the late afternoon of the 6th
June. We had planned to leave Padstow at first opening on the evening
tide for an overnight passage to Newlyn.
Andrew was held up with traffic and just about made it in time for some ‘Rick
Steins’ fish and chips and to have a bit of rest time before we had to leave.
I had chosen a night passage because our trip was likely
to take at least 12 hours and because of the times of high water it could have
meant that we could have been going around the treacherous Land’s End coast to
Mount’s Bay in the darkness and was expecting Lobster pots in the Bay close to Penzance
and Newlyn. By leaving on the evening
high water, we would be in darkness as we were on passage towards
St. Ives, with St. Ives as a bolt hole if we needed it.
There should have been less likelihood of Lobster
Pots in the deep water, but at three o’clock in the morning and in pitch
darkness, we ran over the line (rope) that joins a lobster pot buoy and the
pick-up buoy. It must have been run
over, gone under our keel and then got caught on the rudder as it left the keel. We were so lucky that it did not get
entangled with the propellor or we would have definitely been in, ‘deep doo doo’. The rope had got caught in the gap above the
front section of our semi-balanced rudder.
We could not get it off and subsequently managed to cut the pot buoy
free. Unfortunately, the rope had got
jammed in the gap which made it very difficult to steer Lunar Sea. The auto-helm did work for a time but got a
little warm and decided not to play anymore, so, we had to resort to hand
steering for the remainder of the trip with still about 30 miles to go including
the treacherous gap between Land’s End and the Longships Lighthouse with its
concealed jagged rocks just submerged in places. I had considered our ‘bolt hole’ of St. Ives
but decided that we should carry on and hopefully be able to fix it in Newlyn.
The early dawn and daylight came about an hour or
so after our mishap. Things always feel
better in the daylight and apart from a very stiff rudder we were able to
continue past this unforgiving, rugged shoreline. Going though the gap at Land’s End about 6 o’clock
in the morning. Although it hadn’t been
very windy for a few days, the seas were starting to get rougher and with that
an increase in wind – at times touching 20 knots but again in the wrong
direction. Our ‘Windex’ had stuck at
about 60 degrees, so we found it a little difficult to determine wind speed and
direction. We plodded on past the Minack
Theatre built into the rocks just before Mousehole at Porthcurno and got into Mount’s
Bay with a chance that we could make Penzance before they closed their tide
gate and the safe haven of their ‘Wet Harbour’
It was 11:30 after we were safely rafted five boats
out. I was determined to find out what was stuck around our rudder before we
settled down for a bit of sleep. In the
clear water of the harbour, I managed to slight some yellow rope, like the one
I had cut free. Andrew and I pumped up
the dinghy and I managed to clear the rope from it with our boat hook. To our amazement, out popped the pick-up buoy
still attached to the rope and our rudder was nice a smooth again! We had no idea that the buoy was still there.
It did explain our usually slow average speed.
I was so happy with our efforts, but after being awake for about 30
hours, even more happy to jump into bed for some much-needed sleep. Before Andrew left to go home, he helped me
go up the mast to free our ‘Windex’ – hopefully now it is working perfectly.
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| Approaching Penzance |
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| Penzance Working Harbour |
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| Admiral Benbow |
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| The Buoy |
For us, getting past Land’s End is literally the
turning point of our whole adventure around Britain and a feeling that we are
finally ‘Homeward Bound’. We are about a
third of the way through our Year 3 adventure with about 400 miles left to
go.
Incidentally, I was right about the pots in Mount’s
Bay. It looked like hundreds of them and on our route – of course!!
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