2022 - Second Leg - Penzance to Plymouth
Around Britain – Year 3 – Portishead to Ramsgate – 2022.
Day 13 – 13th June – Penzance to Falmouth
– 36 miles.
Our first impression of Penzance wasn’t a good one, in the area around the train station and the main street running down to it. For the sailor, the wet harbour was still very much a commercial one. With fishing boats and large cargo boats used to carry goods to the Scilly Isle’s. Some areas were set aside for yachts, but they would always be rafted and in our case, we were initially on the outside of four other boats. What with the rafting and the clambering over the inner boats and the new vertical ladder arrangements to get ashore, this made it quite a hazardous experience? One that Julia had decided that we would book ourselves into a hotel for a couple of nights, and with the promise of a bath this was a great option. The hotel was in Chapel Street which turned out to be in the old part of town and gave us a much better impression of the place with all it’s old quirky pubs. We tried a lot of them, and they all seemed to have a flavour of the ‘old’ Cornwall in their own different ways. In all we felt that we had grown to like Penzance but looked forward to the arrival of Alistair Barnett for our onward passages to Plymouth and we did get a chance to meet up with an old friend’s brother, Dick and Sue Pett who now lived at Land’s End.
Cruising sailing is always a compromise. What time to leave to get to a certain place
at a certain time with the most favourable conditions. Our trip from Penzance would be a case in
point. Mileage between Penzance harbour
and the Lizard is 16 miles and to get past it a further 2 miles – likely to
take us three to four hours. Ideally,
the passage around the notoriously bad, confused seas of the Lizard should be
taken with wind and tide if possible.
Our problem was that with High Water at 04:00 and three hours maximum of
favourable tide the tidal stream in the right direction after High Water, would
have meant leaving at 03:00. Apart from
the early, ungentlemanly start time, this would result in us sailing across
Mount Bay in darkness for the first couple of hours. Mount Bay, as we knew when we came into
Penzance, was littered with fishing pots and their buoys. I didn’t want a repeat of our last night
sailing when we picked up one of these – we could not be lucky a second time.
Consequently, we left at 04:40 just before the ‘wet
harbour’ tide gate at Penzance closed.
The outcome of this meant that after having a lovely crossing of Mount
Bay as the Sun rose with the tide and what little wind there was, with us, but found
us with a couple of miles around the Lizard in one and a half metre seas. These were pushed up by the change in tide
meeting the Atlantic swell. The outcome
was not very pleasant and because of the now adverse tide lasted longer than it
should have. We reached the furthest
point South, at 49 degrees, 56.4 minutes South, and 005 degrees, 14 minutes
West, that Lunar Sea would reach this trip.
Once clear of Lizard Point, then Black Head, and then the Manacles, the seas calmed dramatically. Having started so early we had time on our side again before we needed to make our approach to Falmouth. So with time on our side and being a nice sunny day, we decided to have a small detour off our course and visit the Helford River. What a stunning river and a gorgeous place this is with its green slopes coming right down to the river and the multitude of boats bobbing gently on their mooring buoys. Such a lovely place it made us wish we could stay, Falmouth and the ‘Chain Locker’ were calling to me.
We finally were given a berth in Pendennis Marina just past the commercial part of the harbour and a place I knew quite well. It was ideal for the Museum, Pendennis Castle and the Chain Locker. The whole trip took us 10 hours with our diversion to Helford River.
Day 15 – 15th June – Falmouth to Fowey –
26 miles.
The Chain Locker had been modernised since my last visit there about 8 years ago. It had still retained its character being right on the old harbour at Falmouth near the old Customs House. I think it lived up to all the expectations that I had talked about over the 30 plus years that I had been going there. It still had the old ‘TSS Isle of Thanet’ sign up on one of its walls and it brought back some memories which I should probably not elaborate on too much.
We managed a trip to the newish Maritime Museum
with its super views over the Harbour and a trip up to Pendennis Castle with
all its history and again exceptional views.
On the way back from the Castle, I decided that I wanted to return to
the Museum as there was a gallery about old ‘Packet Ships’ that I was particularly
interested in and hadn’t had a chance to see previously. As you go into the Museum there was an exhibit
about the Robertson family, who in 1971 whilst travelling with their family in a
wooden ketch across the Pacific, had been hit by a whale. The result of the whale strike put a large
hole in the boat, and it sank very quickly.
There were 6 of them and they managed to launch their life-raft and small
dinghy before the boat sank. They didn’t
have much time to gather many other things.
The father was a ships navigating officer and the mother a nurse. Together they managed to survive for 38 days
before being picked up by a passing Japanese ship. Their tale of their survival, written by
Dougal Robertson, “Survive the Savage Seas”, was an awe-inspiring read and went
on to become a movie. When I was
teaching the Ocean Navigation Course at the Royal Temple Yacht Club, I would
always encourage the students to read it and I had talked about it to Ali and
Julia on our initial visit.
On my return to the Museum, to my amazement,
Dougal’s son Dougie, was being interviewed and filmed beside the exhibit. He
was giving a talk the following day and I think the interview was part of
it. Whilst waiting, and listening to him
talk, a lady came up to me and started chatting – she was the daughter that in
the book went home from South America back to England and luckily missed the
whole thing. She only got to know about what had happened to her family 2 hours
before it was reported to the world. She
was obviously aware of my huge interest, and she (Ann) brought Dougie over to
meet me also. We had a very long chat for
nearly an hour about the experience, and it was a sometimes emotional,
unexpected time for me having heard the story at the start of my sea-going
career. I was also very lucky to have a
signed copy of “Survive the Savage Seas” signed by them both for me. What a wonderful moment.
The 22-mile passage from Falmouth to Fowey is
straight forward with no tidal issues leaving Falmouth, or arriving in Fowey,
but an early start at 07:30 would mean a favourable tidal stream for the
passage. Again, we made a small detour, this time to visit
Mevagissey. However, being close to low water we could not risk going into the
harbour.
Lunar Sea at perfect rest at Fowey
Entrance into Fowey could be tricky in the dark, but was fairly easy, and having radioed the Harbour Master we were given a chose of swinging moorings – blue buoys. The mooring we had was only a short trip in the dinghy to the town quay, which Ali and I rowed across. After an obligatory beer in Royal Fowey Yacht Club (our excuse was that we wanted to book for dinner in the evening) we both returned with wet bums from the leaky dinghy. A dry Water Taxi would go on to save any embarrassments later. This was yet another gorgeous River, one of so many along this South Cornwall Coast, but after our quiet night bobbing about on our mooring and a trip ashore for Ali and Julia - again in the Water Taxi - we would need to leave. Julia will talk about the local dinghies in her blog so I will leave it to her to relay the story about them.
We left Fowey at 13:15 to make the best use of the
tide and to arrive in Plymouths ‘Sutton Harbour Marina’ which has a free flow
through its lock either side of high water. This was again thankfully another
uneventful passage apart from a pod of four porpoise crossing our bow and a
Navy Patrol boat, HMS Severn, doing exercises with a helicopter, and ‘The
World’ an apartment cruise ship anchored in the outer harbour just inside the huge
breakwater protecting the Port. We did
detour again past the lovely harbour of Mevagissey which we couldn’t enter
because of low water.
Sutton Marina is right at the centre of the old
part of Plymouth in the Barbican area and a great place to be to explore
from. The Marina itself has all the
facilities you would expect from a modern marina and some excellent showers, laundry,
and recycling facilities. Probably the
best marina we have visited on this whole around Britain trip. Maybe Portavadie on Lock Fyne in Scotland was
on a par, but the location was against that one. One bonus for me is that my Lidstone
ancestors all come from this part of the world, and we are right beside Looe
Street where my paternal Grandmothers was born.
Well done josh. Julia
ReplyDeleteExcellent blog Cap’n!! 🏴☠️Dee
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