Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, 25th June to 1st July 2022
In Falmouth
On Saturday an old acquaintance came into Falmouth: the Scillonian gaff-rigged pilot cutter Amelie Rose, with her skipper Nic. I've sailed on this beautiful boat a couple of times and it was good to catch up with Nic. The boat is a replica of the sort that would have taken pilots out to ships in the age of sail; they were designed for speed (because the first pilot to the ship got the job) and ease of handling by a small crew. These boats are the perfect marriage of form and function, and visually are in a different league from modern plastic boats like Goldfinch. You can see what I mean by following this link: https://www.topsail-adventures.co.uk/
The weather was forecast to deteriorate on Sunday, and we decided to make the most of our time in Falmouth and do something land-based. So we went to the movies, and watched the new Top Gun film - an entertaining piece of nonsense featuring almost non-stop aerobatic antics, with just a little bit of sailing thrown in to make us feel at home. This was followed by a traipse through the streets of Falmouth in search of somewhere to eat, having not booked anywhere on a Saturday evening. We were rewarded by the Stable pizza restaurant, which supplied us with very tasty food and even tastier wine. As it happens, Debbie and Bryan's daughter Sarah works in the Bristol branch of this company, and being a qualified sommelier (or should that be sommelière?) may well have chosen the wine selection for the whole company - so thank you Sarah!
As predicted, the blow came on Sunday. With the marina at Falmouth being so jam-packed with boats, the howling of the wind was made even worse as it whistled through the rigging and masts, making a banshee-screaming noise. We and all our neighbours were glad to be snugly berthed in the shelter of Falmouth Harbour.
To Fowey
The next day we sadly had to say goodbye to Steve, who left us in Falmouth to go back home. The weather on Monday was much better than the previous day, and it was set fair for our next port of call, Fowey. Once again the Clerk of the Weather was inordinately kind to us on this passage, and we sailed much of the way there.
Fowey (pronounced 'Foy') is a picturesque Cornish town in a relatively sheltered river. Like many places on this coast it increasingly depends on tourism; but this does mean that it is replete with pubs, ice-cream parlours and food-shops. There is a distillery there, called Tarquin's; their range includes a special gin called Hell Bay, which is the result of a collaboration between Fowey and Bryher, in the Isles of Scilly. The gin is infused with seaweed from Hell Bay in Bryher, just across the way from where we were moored when we were in New Grimsby Sound. I just had to buy a bottle as a present to Goldfinch. (She drank it all.)
On Tuesday there was another blow, perhaps even stronger than Sunday's. We were fairly well sheltered on the pontoon in Fowey, but even so, when the tide was flooding an uncomfortable swell built up (known as a 'scend') which made the boat rock and the fenders squeak. These pontoons are on the other side of the river from the town, and not connected to the land in any way, so the only way to get ashore is by boat. On Monday we had taken our own little inflatable across; but on the Tuesday, with the wind and the swell, we were very grateful for the water-taxi - a motor-boat that for a fee will carry you from your boat to the town and back again.
The River Yealm
On Wednesday we set out again. We were bound for the River Yealm, just beyond Plymouth. It's not far from Fowey, and yet again we had fair winds, so we sailed most of the way. En route we even deliberately slowed down to three knots, and Bryan trailed a line behind the boat in the hope of catching some mackerel, but to no avail. In the process, we lost a bucket overboard; we had a bit of fun trying to do a man overboard manoeuvre under sail, but alas the bucket went down before we could recover him. If it had been a person, we would have turned the engine on; but it was a timely reminder that I'm a bit out of practice in these sailing set-pieces that get drilled into you when you do a proper RYA course.
The entrance to the River Yealm looks daunting. It is very narrow, and outside the recommended channel it gets dangerously shallow. We arrived at low water, when it is at its shallowest. Once again, our modern technology, with GPS and chart-plotters, made it so much easier than doing it with only transits, soundings and bearings.
The Yealm is a very beautiful place. I've been there twice before in Goldfinch, and it's been delightful every time. This time, if anything, it was even more lovely, because the grey, cloudy, gusty intervals we'd had over the last few days were now gone, and the sun was shining. But the river is not Devon's best-kept secret: there are dozens of moorings here, and when we arrived most of them were already taken. It's not packed as tightly as St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly, but just about every buoy was already occupied. There are also a couple of pontoons, with no shore access; as luck would have it there was a space on one of these that looked like it was just about big enough for Goldfinch. So having mooched as far up the river as we could, we turned round and had a look at this space. It was quite windy - not severely, like the day before, but noticeably - and the tide was flooding energetically into the river. Having turned round, we were now heading into the tide. This actually makes it easier to control the boat. Motoring slowly into the stream, you can still be moving forward through the water while not making any progress over the ground. In these conditions, a touch of helm one way or the other means you can slide the boat sideways into a narrow space. A couple of our neighbours on the pontoon took our lines from us as we ferry-glided into place.
As we settled in for the evening, more boats were arriving. The boat astern of us had to accept a smaller yacht rafted alongside, but luckily that was the limit of the doubling-up. On the boat opposite us on the pontoon, we gathered that the skipper was there with her daughter and three friends. The youngsters (I guess late teens/early twenties) all went off in inflatable kayaks, while the skipper, looking at the exuberant tidal stream, got her dinghy and outboard motor ready for a rescue expedition. It wasn't needed. if not duffers, won't drown.
We were tied up in a good spot. Only a short dinghy-ride away there were some steps that would take us ashore, and the Ship Inn was only about ten minutes' walk from there. On Nic's recommendation we had booked a table there, so that evening we strolled along, enjoying the scenery as we went, and had a decent meal at the pub.
Salcombe
The following day we had one of those unexpected mid-morning departures, when the tides actually encourage you to have a bit of a lie-in and a leisurely breakfast. The yacht that was rafted up behind us left earlier, and decided to do a 180-degree turn to leave the pontoon. It wasn't pretty, but they managed it safely, with a bit of urgent throttling. The yacht ahead of us had also left, meaning that we had a clear space in front of us. When we departed, the tide was ebbing, so it was pushing us from behind. This meant that we couldn't do the ferry-gliding manoeuvre that we'd done on arrival; but with nothing ahead of us, all we needed to do was to cast off and be on our way. As we left (my crew told me later), heads popped up on all the neighbouring boats and looked admiringly at the fuss-free way in which we set out. One of the joys of sailing with people you know well and trust is that you can do these manoeuvres without any kerfuffle, and sometimes with barely a word spoken.
From the Yealm, our next stop was Salcombe. From a casual glance at the map you would be forgiven for thinking it lies at the mouth of a river, like Fowey. But there is no river: this is more like a Spanish ría, a drowned valley. Of all the mainland West Country ports we have visited, I think this is the most visually stunning. In some ways it is comparable to Fowey, because the land-based habitation climbs up the hillsides on either side as you enter the harbour; but it is more spacious, and generally prettier.
At the entrance to the harbour is the notorious Bar. Many harbours have a similar feature, where over the years the ebb and flow of the tide causes a barrier of sand to build up, making a wall of shallow water in the path of vessels seeking shelter. There is a similar obstacle, for example, in Padstow in north Cornwall, known as the Doom Bar, because of the noise that it can make at certain states of the tide. The Bar at Salcombe can kick up quite a fuss when the ebb tide plummets out over it, and it can become quite dangerous. It may not have a nationally popular beer named after it, but it did inspire some lines from one of our great poets:
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
- Tennyson, Crossing the Bar
Tennyson's poem was specifically inspired by the Bar at Salcombe; the imagined sea-voyage he described is a metaphor for death. But he was talking about leaving the harbour, and we were just arriving.
After we'd crossed the bar inward-bound, we were faced with the reality of finding somewhere to tie up. One of the delights of Salcombe is that there isn't a marina there, so you do have to moor on a buoy (or, less easily these days, drop your anchor). We found a buoy around the same place as I'd moored some years ago, when Adam got his GCSE results and we'd popped a bottle of prosecco over the water; but before we'd got as far as grabbing it with our boathook, a representative of the Harbour Master pitched up in a launch and told us it was reserved for boats over 20 metres. He directed us to a different buoy, much further from the town, which we found after some confused searching.
We sat on the boat and enjoyed the view. It was a bit blusterous to begin with, but as the evening wore on it became calmer. Bryan went ashore to do some food shopping, using the local water-taxi, but the rest of us were content to stay on board and enjoy the scenery. Here, you are not treading on each others' toes like we did in St Mary's, or even moored within biscuit-toss as in the River Yealm. It is a busy, even crowded harbour, but it is big enough to take all the traffic without feeling overwhelmed. And on a clear evening such as this, it is stunningly pretty. I have been here several times before, and visited the town. We have sat outside the splendid Yacht Club and overlooked the water-borne comings and goings. I have visited the War Memorial and felt a tingle go down my spine to see the name M R B Browse on it (almost certainly a distant relation, as my family originally came from Devon, three or four generations back). But this time, as we were approaching the end of our June leg of the voyage, I was happy to sit on my own boat and appreciate the beauty of the setting.
Across Lyme Bay to Weymouth
The following day we had a long passage ahead of us. The long arc of Lyme Bay has no harbours that can take a yacht like Goldfinch, so we had to cross it in one go, all 67 miles of it. Our next port was Weymouth, where we were to leave the boat until next month.
This was another of those passages where the tide was crucial. Just before Weymouth is the Isle of Portland - not actually an island, but a comma-shaped peninsula that juts out into the Channel. For centuries, the limestone from Portland has been used in monumental buildings, including the Tower of London, St Paul's Cathedral, the Bank of England, and the UN Headquarters in New York. Despite all this mining, dating back at least to the time of the Romans, there is still quite a lot of rock poking out into the sea, in a coast that is otherwise gently curving. If your transport mostly consists of cars and planes, you might be unmoved by this; but for anyone who goes to sea, particularly in small boats, this geography has profound consequences.
This isn't just a matter of detail. To quote Tom Cunliffe, the compiler of the Shell Channel Pilot:
Portland Race is the most dangerous extended area of broken water in the English Channel [...] Quite substantial vessels drawn into it have been known to disappear without trace.
In a way, this passage was as serious as crossing the Pentland Firth, which was a major milestone in last year's Two Summers voyage. There are two main differences, one good and one bad. On the one hand, I've been past Portland Bill a few times before without any problems. On the other, the crucial point was at the end of a passage of more than 50 miles, which made the pinpoint timing much harder to achieve.
After much contemplation, mind-changing and dithering, I decided that being early was better than being late. So we set off at about 7 in the morning from Salcombe, expecting to arrive in Weymouth about 8 in the evening. Weymouth has the added attraction of a lifting bridge which opens every two hours until 8pm, and then once again at 9pm.
The first part of our passage was much faster than I'd allowed for. Having erred on the side of what I thought was caution, I found that we were making speeds over the ground of 7 knots or more, helped by favourable tides. I knew that there would come a time when the tide turned against us: Lyme Bay is just too wide to get a lift all the way across it. So I accepted the extra speed, knowing that we would get some opposition later.
The wind was once again in our favour: a west/southwest breeze, strong enough to push us forward but not too strong. In many ways, the highlight of this June leg has been that we've done more sailing than motoring.
Once or twice on the passage we thought about trying to slow down, but it somehow goes against the grain. If you know the tide is eventually going to turn foul, every instinct tells you to keep going while you can.
In planning for this passage I had for the first time in ages made use of good old-fashioned paper charts. I'd marked off approximately where we needed to be each hour in order to get to Portland at the right moment, when the tide was weak and about to turn in our favour. Every hour I was plotting our actual position on the chart, and comparing it with the target. And relentlessly, inescapably, we were always two hours ahead of schedule.
And now Portland was very visible ahead of us. In the meantime, the wind had been increasing steadily throughout the passage. It was more or less behind us. When it is weak or moderate, a wind from astern is virtually useless, because it is moving the same way as you want the boat to move. You might think this is a good thing, but you have to remember that the wind in the sails is the net result of the true wind and the boat's movement. If the boat were moving at the same speed as the wind, it would feel nothing and the sails would be useless. For us on this day, as the day progressed, the true wind grew to such a strength that we could turn off the engine and carry on with just the headsail, and still make 7 or 8 knots over the ground.
Well, all that sounds good. But it did mean that when the tide turned against us we were in exactly the wrong place - much further ahead than I'd expected. As it happened, this was the day of spring tides. This is nothing to do with the seasons of the year: spring tides happen twice a month. Most people know that the tide is caused by the gravitational effect of the moon; but not everyone realises that the sun also plays a part. When the sun and the moon are pulling in the same direction (roughly at full moon and new moon), the tides are more extreme: high tide is higher, and low tide is lower. The horizontal movement of water (the tidal stream) is therefore also stronger. Conversely, when the sun and moon are at 90 degrees to each other (at half moon), the range of tide is less and the tidal stream is weaker. This is known as neap tides.
So here we were, approaching one of the most important tidal gates in British waters, on the day of the strongest tide, with the stream about to turn against us. To add to the fun, the wind was still at our back, and freshening with every minute. This meant that the wind was going one way, and soon the tide would be going the other way. The result of this argument is always shorter, steeper waves; and in an area where the tide is notoriously assertive, it promised to be a bit sportier than we'd bargained for.
As you round the Bill of Portland there are a few options available. One of these, the so-called Inshore Passage, involves approaching Chesil Beach to within about 300 metres and hugging the shore as you go round the peninsula. In this way, in fair weather, it is possible to tuck inshore of the ill-omened Race. I've done this before and it's been fine, but today, with a Force 5-6 building behind us, it didn't feel like this was 'fair weather' within the meaning of the Act. So I opted for the woossy alternative of giving the Bill 2 or 3 miles' clearance.
Just to the east of Portland Bill is an area of shallow water with the dispiriting name of The Shambles. In case you are not already wide-eyed enough, the sea gets even crazier over this patch, and you have to make a decision about which side of it to go. As we approached, I could see on my multi-function display that the tide on the western side of the Shambles was a south-going 6 knots. Essentially, this meant that even at full pelt we would be standing still if we went that way. The passage to the east was much longer, but offered contrary tides of 'only' three knots. So I plumped for the eastern route.
However...
Turning east meant that the wind and waves were on our beam - approaching us from the side. As the wind picked up and the tide flowed ever faster, the waves became steeper and higher. For the first time ever in Goldfinch, I began to feel that the sea had beaten us. I changed my mind, and turned north, so that the weather was behind us. We were going west of the Shambles after all. Till now we had been sailing, in the fresh breeze from astern; but now I turned the engine on and adjusted our speed to minimise the impact of the battering from the elements.
If you are the person on the wheel, you experience things differently from the rest of the crew. At that moment, when I was battling the elements, and to a certain extent improvising the navigation from moment to moment, I decided that I would do this myself. I was skipper, not because of greater experience and ability, but because this whole Two Summers project was my idea. But now, having planned this passage and arguably been far too prudent in the timing, it was my responsibility to get us through it safely. In practical terms, it was easier to stay at the wheel than to hand over to anyone else, even though any of them could have done it just as well as me.
I'm not even sure how long it lasted. Maybe an hour? The tidal stream against us was not as strong as the chart-plotter threatened, but it was still pretty solid, and our speed over the ground was only about three or four knots, with the engine revved in tune with the waves and the headsail still full with the following wind. It was a bit scary but exhilarating, and with every minute that passed the feeling of apprehension grew less. There had been moments, when the short steep waves had been hitting us from the side, when I had felt distinctly uncomfortable. Now, the adrenaline was receding a bit, and I was just standing at the wheel, trying to keep the boat on the right course as she surfed down the waves.
Gradually, as we got into the lee of the Bill of Portland, the sea flattened. When the worst was over I handed the helm to Bryan. We carried on past Portland and towards Weymouth.
To get into the marina at Weymouth, you have to go under the lifting bridge. This opens every two hours until 8pm, and then there is a final opening at 9pm. Following my original passage plan, we'd hoped to get there in time for the 8 o'clock bridge, knowing that there was another one at 9 if we missed that. As it turned out, with the fair wind and (to begin with) favourable tide, we were just in time for the 6pm bridge opening, without even having to tie up on the waiting pontoon. We carried on to the marina, found the berth that had been allocated to us, and went into town for supper. We found a pub that served us steaks cooked just right, and we celebrated the end of the June 2022 leg of the Two Summers adventure.
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