Penarth to Falmouth

After several days of waiting for a better forecast, it looked like it was finally coming. The weekend had way smaller waves and wind promised, so our yachting friends from Portishead, Tim and Sheila, drove round to join us. After a day of settling in on board and a last walk around Cardiff Bay, we prepared to head off.

Wales gave us a last present; it was tipping down as we left the berth and headed out to wait for the barrage lock and the sea proper. Hiding under the bimini cover allowed the captain and Tim some respite from it all:

Luckily it stopped as we were in the lock so we were only soggy not drowned....

Taking the 10am lock out, we pottered down the Bristol Channel in grey and gloomy weather. Calm enough to start with but the wind was, of course, on the nose. We were overtaken at close quarters by a quite ugly ship that was doing buoy maintenance work in the area:

Our route looks strange as it starts from somewhere in the middle of the water on this shot from Marinetraffic.com. Simple enough reason, meanness! We don't pay for the upmarket access to their data and so only get track details for the previous 24 hours. Still, you can see where Cardiff is clearly enough:

The swell built up to the expected 2 to 2.5m (on the nose again) as we got further west. The sun came out, stuff looked nicer until we appraoched the headland off Woolacombe. There the tide was whipping around the headland in our direction of travel. The wind, which was on the nose, was whipping around it too. The combination of wind over tide superimposed on the swell from the Atlantic was "interesting".  Some nice big high sided waves of up to 4m appeared (on the nose of course) with lovely "holes" on the other side for the boat to fall into. We washed the anchor regularly, had to listen to a couple of cupboards making noises as things moved around and managed to make our passengers feel a bit secondhand.

Once clear of the headland and heading for Hartland Point the swell settled back to the forecast couple of metres (still on the nose of course) and all was well. OK, all was well except our passengers had to recover a bit.

We were treated to another of those glorious sunsets and Sheila took these:

Having double glazing means you get some interesting reflections of the sunset across the saloon too:

You can even see the  outline of Pooh Bear who seems to be staring intently out to sea.

The overnight run down the north coast of Cornwall was pretty quiet. A lovely moon and plenty of stars made looking outside more interesting:

No other traffic around to cause us to divert our course or give the helmsperson any cause for concern. We reached Cape Cornwall just as the sky started to brighten. Well, that is change from black to dark grey.  Passing Land's End and Longships lighthouse, it was "grey and atmospheric" as the poetic types say.  Misty and overcast to the rest of us but quite dramatic really. As we turned east to head up the English Channel, the fog descended so the radar was put back into service for a while. Luckily it cleared and passing the Lizard was done in sun - but with the wind on the nose again as now it had become easterly. How does that work?

The general consensus was that the Lizard should be called the Crocodile when viewed from the south west. Perhaps ancient Cornwall man hadn't seen Crocodile Dundee at the cinema before he named it.

Great excitement as we then turned more northerly and  headed up towards the Manacles. We were joined by some Risso's dolphins including a mum and baby who spent ages bow riding with us. Much squealing and excitement from the crew who firmly believes that if you show appreciation for the dolphins' efforts they repay you by putting on a good show. It seemed to work. Photographing them is always tricky. Here is Tim's handiwork:

And a little video:

A little wide open throttle burn before we happily entered Falmouth and headed up river to our favourite spot on Tolverne mid river pontoon. It was pretty empty bar one little dayboat with a couple on board who were sunbathing. As we moored they noticed our port of registry on the stern and asked if we had just come around the corner from Fowey. Tim proudly announced that no, we had come from Cardiff. They seemed sceptical and double checked with the Captain when he appeared a little later after pinning the stabilisers, killing the engine and navigation gear etc etc.

The trip took us 28.5 hours, a quick one. Neap tides helped, as did running a little harder than we normally would at around 1630rpm. Nothing else dramatic to report, the boat and machinery behaved after her winter layup. Well, we could report a small glass of wine to celebrate our arrival as Tim and Sheila were fully recovered well before then.