Sea Trials Underway

Sorry for the lack of updates guys, we’ve had zero or flaky internet connection for a while now and indeed it’s still the case so this will be quite a short post.

On Tuesday we left our mooring at Weir Quay and motored down the river Tamar, out under the Tamar bridges between Devon and Cornwall, past Devonport docks and the Torpoint ferry and out into Plymouth harbour. It took the best part of three hours to reach our tranquil overnight anchorage close in shore to the village of Cawsand.

Early the following morning we weighed anchor and headed out past Rame Head on route for Fowey with a planned minor detour via Polperro to wave at some friends who were staying there. Given that that this was the first time I’d been able to raise the sails properly I guess it was somewhat fortuitous that the wind was very light but it didn’t take long to satisfy myself that actually everything was working pretty well and we caught a gust off Rame head that saw the log wizz round to 8.5knots. Unfortunately it didn’t last and for the rest of the 20 odd mile trip we had next to no wind and what there was was right on the nose.

We were motor sailing by the time we got to Polperro hence the mainsail only shot below, even that came down for the final run into Fowey.

We pulled into Fowey after some 7 hours and 21Nm. As expected the harbour was absolutely packed because it is Regatta week, it was a tad nervy manoeuvring Gleda through all the moored craft and just to add spice a dinghy race had just started so I had them to contend with as well! The Fowey Harbour crew were fantastically helpful though and found us a berth rafted up alongside another cat moored to the temporary pontoons they put in place for the Summer.

Thanks to one of our Twitter friends here’s a shot of us heading for our berth.

We’ve been here for 3 nights enjoying the action, there has been constant activity on the water and on Thursday night the RAF Red Arrows aerobatic team put on a stunning display.

We were able to host some friends for the display and a good time was had by all.

Tonight there’s a torchlight flotilla through the harbour followed by a fireworks display. It’ll be a nice end to our stay in Fowey. Tomorrow morning we set sail for Falmouth, we should get some wind this time although once again it’ll be on the nose so we’ll find out how Gleda goes to windward. The forecast for Monday is lousy so I’m planning to find a spot up the river Fal somewhere to hunker down for a couple of days. I’ll update you when I can but so far so good, we’re cruising!