For once everything went according to plan. Maureen Shaw kindly delivered Peter back to us at Padstow and we left at 1330 on Tuesday 22 July. Unfortunately we left the harbour just at the time that a small RNLI craft and two other yachts were entering, although we couldn’t see them until we rounded the harbour wall. Fortunately a helpful bystander kept us informed. Otherwise it could have been a very short trip.
The sea was a bit lumpy at first but the wind was in the right direction to get the sails up and the tide was increasingly with us so we were doing 7 plus knots by the time we rounded the Longships lighthouse at Land’s End.
(I know that I am not wearing a lifejacket. I was cooking tea when “the powers that be” decided to have a major sail change…can you take the wheel please…..)
We’d seen hardly any other traffic until then but suddenly we were inundated. It was getting fairly dark when Peter announced that we were headed straight for “thousands of yachts”. I thought he was joking – maybe he was on the precise number – but suddenly were were dodging our way amongst a whole fleet of oncoming racing yachts who were headed for the same buoy as we were and appeared as ghostly outlines in the dark. It was like driving the wrong way down a motorway with only side lights but thankfully we came out the other end with no damage to anyone, although my nerves were a bit frayed. Peter was having a ball….. The sea was fairly busy until we were past Falmouth but then the wind died and we motored on into the dawn and reached Fowey at 0700.
I have sailed into Fowey before - on a square-rigger and on a pilot cutter - but it was a bit different doing it in our own boat. Yet again I missed the photo opportunity because we spotted an empty visitors mooring buoy (a rare thing at Fowey) just inside the entrance to the estuary and so the camera had to go back inside PDQ while we caught the buoy (10/10 to Peter) and tied on. Thankfully Maureen had driven over from Padstow the previous night and caught our arrival on camera.
We then spent several days waiting to go into Tom’s Shipyard to change the propeller in order to increase the engine revs and to deal with a few other issues (yes, we’ve only just escaped from Sharpness Shipyard and straight away we were looking to get lifted out in another yard). We motored up to the sea wall on Friday afternoon and the yard trundled the crane over and fitted the strops and the lifting bars. It is a big crane but there was much creaking and groaning as Severn Swan came out of the water. The yard had set up the lift for a 30 tonne boat (which is what we thought she was) but the crane was showing 40 tonnes as she lifted out - so back into the water she went before any of the straps broke. Then it was home time at the yard so we went back out on the moorings for the weekend.
On Monday there was already a big fishing boat along by the craning wall and at this point the yard suggested that as it was spring tides we should dry out on the beach along the wall by the ferry pick-up point. We managed to sneak in early on the high tide before the multitude of tourists arrived but we rapidly became an unwilling tourist attraction. We went up and down with the tide, aided by two wheelie bins full of water which gave us sufficient tilt to lean in to the wall rather than falling outwards when the water disappeared. The first time the angle of lean was a bit more than we expected and our spreaders touched the fairy lights strung between the lamp posts on the quayside but thankfully it was not enough to break them. Next time round we had more confidence to reduce the amount of lean. The prop came off and was replaced with the old one that we happened to be carrying with us and the barn-door-sized rudder came off as well with a big chain hoist. The rudder had been so stiff that steering the boat was like a workout for the upper body (so much so that the autopilot refused to work at all). Martin ground out the bushes that the pintles sit in and we hung it back on again with the help of a Dutch couple who were passing by on their way to the ferry - and suddenly we have light touch steering again. There were frantic bursts of activity underneath the boat when the tide was out (less than 4 hours) and then work inside when the water came back, all the while hiding from the tourists as far as possible (or I did anyway).
We remained on the beach for 3 days and then had to go back out to the moorings before we got stuck there as the height of the tides gradually decreased. We still had a a number of fairly substantial jobs to get finished though.
What with the weather and the list of jobs to do we decided to stay at Polruan with Lissie and moved the boat further up the estuary to Penmarlam where there is more shelter. We have, after all, long dreamed of sitting up on the hill looking down at our own boat (although we can’t see it now as it is round the bend in the river) so we might as well make the most of it, even if the weather is going to be pants (for most of August by the looks of it). I am patching up the varnish work destroyed by last winter’s storms and scrubbing the hull, Martin got the watermaker working but then the inverter packed up.....and so the jobs go on!!
In view of the inexorable passage of time we’ve also had to review our round-the-world plans which look as though they are going to be delayed until next year. C’est la vie…… I can think of worse places to get stuck.
