Summer 2014 Part I – dolphins galore!

(Yes, the date at the top is right – realised I had various drafts saved and have finally forced myself into getting up to date!)

It took a while to get Maid of Mettle into the water in 2014 – it turned out that moving house, being flooded with work and doing a fair amount of maintenance on Maid were even more of a hindrance than living in Grimsby.

Still, it seemed I wasn’t the only one a bit behind on things – there are normally four posts marking the channel across the ‘Bridge’ in Plymouth Sound (actually a shallow ridge between Drake’s Island and Mount Edgcumbe, further cluttered with old anti-submarine defences), but one seemed to be missing. It might not actually be a bad thing if it stayed that way – the bright yellow buoy in its place is easier to spot!

Having got out of the strong tides in the Narrows and into a bit more wind I set sail and headed out round Penlee Point and Rame Head towards the anchorage off Looe. It was tempting to head off course when I spotted dolphins leaping inshore off Rame Head, but I prefer to let them come to me if they want to.

It was a beautiful sunny day for tacking towards Looe..

and admiring the rest of the coastline – much of the area between Looe and Rame Head is very pretty, but with little shelter and being off the direct route between harbours and anchorages I don’t often see much of it.

And here we are anchored off Looe – fairly full beach but deserted anchorage, easy to sail in and drop the anchor on sand. The north-westerly wind had required a fair amount of tacking to get here but having done that it was nice and sheltered..

..and even calmer when the wind dropped later in the evening.

The tide wasn’t due to be fair for a while the next morning but with beautiful conditions I decided to get going anyway – first running down past St Mary’s Island..

and then tacking along the coast again. There was a fair amount of company, from this little coaster carrying a digger..

..to some more dolphins!

Tonight’s anchorage was a new one for me – Gorran Haven, just between the Dodman and Mevagissey. It was once a larger fishing port than Mevva but is now a lot quieter, though there are a number of small boats moored within the harbour wall and hauled up on the beach.

As I expected with a north-westerly wind it was nice and sheltered again. This time I did launch the dinghy and rowed ashore for a wander around the village.

I also started to figure out why I kept seeing dolphins – there were fish swarming so close in that people could just grab them out of the harbour!

I decided to go for a walk out to the Dodman the next morning while waiting for the tide. The walk up from the harbour is pretty steep to start with!

It got rather windier as I got round to the more exposed part of the headland – enough that the gulls were starting to find it heavy going at times in the gusts.

At ground level this little fellow was probably less affected..

The cross was instituted by a local rector – besides the spiritual aspect it serves as a very useful daymark for navigation. Many shipwrecks have been partly attributed to one headland being mistaken for another, especially in poor visibility.

This was of course a very prominent location – signalling stations have been located here in medieval times, as well as the Napoleonic War and both World Wars.

There were plenty of boats coming the other way around the Dodman with the tide behind them. I was hoping the front would pass and give nice weather by the time I started heading the opposite direction.

A bit more local history – you can also still see medieval strip field boundaries here.

Going further back to the Iron Age the earth embankment on the right here, known as the Bulwark, was constructed to form a ‘cliff castle’ on the promontory – the other sides are naturally quite secure!

(I just like this picture. There’s nothing like a good cow to improve a foreground.)

The weather was indeed clearing as I walked through Penare back down to Gorran Haven, now showing definite signs of life.

With a fair tide and sky it was time to head on, into the same chilly north-west wind  – again gliding gently out of Gorran Haven before tacking along the coast.

The next big headland west of the Dodman is Nare Head (though it doesn’t stick out enough to get a line in ‘Spanish Ladies’), looking nice and dramatic here in the afternoon sun.

A fine sail got even better when we were joined by a school of dolphins while sailing into Gerrans Bay. With Maid sailing beautifully they had a great time playing in the bow-wave..

..occasionally doing laps of the boat..

..and generally having a good time as far as I could tell, and I was delighted to share in it, both taking pictures and just leaning on the forestay and grinning wildly (no, I didn’t take a picture of that).

Eventually they headed off to gobble some more fish and I dropped anchor off Portscatho – another relatively exposed coastal anchorage, but perfect in these conditions. It also happens to be the home of my friends Si and Cat, who I first met on Maid in the French canals a few years ago, and it’s nice to try and surprise them – this time I found Si outside the Plume straight away.

As an extra bonus he was planning on taking their fishing boat Kensa out the next day and there was space to me to join them. I was especially keen to go having followed their blog of her construction after we got back from our respective voyaging.

The next morning dawned golden, with Nare Head standing out against the Dodman in the background and Gull Rock offshore on the right.

Here is Maid with the little harbour in the background – again a short wall sheltering an assortment of fishing boats and dayboats.

..and here is Kensa..

It was a very good day out on Kensa with Si and their friend Debs – chilly wind but plenty of sunshine and even more importantly plenty of mackerel. I had left my camera behind though, so we have a bit of a gap on images until later – this is the colourful view down across the beach from the top of the slip later on (probably after the post-fishing pint).

I have very fond memories of drinking champagne stood knee-deep in the water celebrating Kensa’s launch the last time I was here, but the sou-westerly wind and swell at the time made the anchorage rather rolly when I eventually rowed back out to the boat. With the wind now seemingly set in the north-west spending a while here and exploring nearby anchorages seemed very appealing.

(yes, this kind of thing is part of the reason why I never actually get as far as the Scillies despite them being a nominal target for most of my holidays… They’ll still be there for a good while yet.)

August 2012 part 2

Having shot west at the start of the holiday allowed me to cruise back to Torpont with a lot more stops, visiting quite a few places I’d only ever sailed past before.

A calm morning to start with – at least there were no issues with the chain ferry motoring down!

By the time I got down to Carrick Roads there was a lovely breeze.

So out past Black Rock at the entrance to Falmouth Harbour (the entrance would be too straightforward without one great big hazard right in the middle)…

and round the Roseland, past Nare Head and the Dodman to tie up between two mooring buoys in the outer harbour at Mevagissey. Not something I’d done in a while but with the dinghy in the water very simple- basically just pick one buoy up normally (I say simple – not necessarily easy!) and then row a line to the other one.

Mevagissey, or ‘Mevva’, is a beautiful little town, with the harbour possibly still home to as many fishing boats as pleasure boats, though tourism is a much bigger industry now.

Incidentally, it’s claimed (though wikipedia regards it to be somewhat dubious) to have been the first town in the UK with electric street lights, run by a power station built in 1895 and powered by pilchard oil. That’s some sign of how big the fishing fleet would have been then, but probably didn’t do much for any early tourists!

Here you can see the inner harbour, with the old lifeboat house in the bottom left.

Here’s the evening entertainment signing on the quayside..

..and here’s another picture of the inner harbour.

The next day the wind was rather strong so with Maid tucked safely in the harbour I went for a walk north along the coast..

..to Pentewan, once the site of a much bigger harbour since lost to siltation. The very shallow shelving sandy beach looks perfect for the caravan park though.

Surprisingly, the inner basins are still largely intact..

though the ‘channel’ to the sea is minimal.

Mevagissey has a much more practical entrance which I departed from the next day – the wind hadn’t abated but the sunshine on the other side of the cold front made quite a difference.

It was a fast and exciting sail tacking up to Charlestown at the northern side of St Austell Bay, taking full advantage of the shelter of the land and consequent smooth sea to charge to windward in winds I’d never normally want to tack into.

Charlestown is one of the harbours that took over when Pentewan went into decline, and is still used by tall ships today. The fee to use the lock is rather beyond smaller boats, and I didn’t plan on staying long anyway so anchored off and rowed into the harbour in the dinghy for a look around.

The bottom shelves quite slowly here as well making it quite a long row in against the wind – you can just see Maid anchored offshore in the background between the pier heads.

Here’s another look at the ships inside-  if you’ve seen any period drama with a nautical flavour you may recognise them or the harbour.

Next we shot off downwind, past Gribbin Head and the entrance to Fowey.. Rather less hard work, and almost as exhilarating..

…though I was rather wishing I wasn’t towing the dinghy, which was fine going upwind but now kept trying to overtake and ramming the back of the boat, till I finally found a system to prevent it.

I was aiming for Polperro, which is an altogether different harbour to Pentewan (as was) or Charlestown, very much a crack in the rocks kind of entrance. Can you see it?

(it’s just to the right of the dark brown rock extending from the left, below the lowest white house)

Given the wind strength I’ll let myself off getting my thumb in this one (note the angle of heel despite the sheltered water and having taken the sails down).

Despite my recent practice picking up the mooring buoy in the much stronger headwind took a while longer than in Mevagissey. It wasn’t helped by the fact that there was no room to maneuver so the couple of times that I missed it and the front of the boat got blown away from it by the wind I ended up having to leave the cove and go back in again. I think the fisherman I kept going past found it amusing enough to not mind.

Eventually I got set and was now glad I had the dinghy in the water to row a stern line out again – there really isn’t any room to swing here without blocking the channel or potentially hitting a rock. I was glad I had a very long line – it was quite a distance (see the angle of the rope in the bottom right!).

Here’s the inner harbour..

..and Maid out in the outer harbour, with a beautiful moon, especially enjoyed with some very tasty fish and chips at the end of a long and satisfying day.

(it was slightly disconcerting to still hear the swell on the rocks when getting into bed though..)

The next morning I went for a walk along the coast path, finding what was presumably an old huer’s hut

 

and a bit more of a wander round Polperro – you might guess that this is ‘Shell Cottage’.

Once the tide had turned I carried on eastward, before rounding St Mary’s Island and anchoring off Looe.

 

There’s plenty of space inside, but it’s shallow and drying out against a wall really restricts when you can leave – especially if you’re heading eastwards and want to have plenty of time sailing with the tide rising. It’s clearly a popular place for crab-fishing though..

The next afternoon’s sailing was very relaxed..

..with plenty of time to admire the coast and the little villages, while giving the firing range a bit further along a wide berth.

It was a beautiful evening to arrive back in Plymouth Sound and anchor in Barn Pool for the night,

with a rather striking moonrise oncc again.

From there was just a short hop back to Torpoint, although admittedly one that required careful timing due to the strong tides through the Narrows. And that was that 🙂