Dittisham to Plymouth

After the gales went through, and the captain had a fun afternoon scrubbing and scraping around the waterline, we decided to leave the paradise known as Dittisham and head for the "bright lights" of Plymouth. Finding a marina berth there was difficult. We'd not been boating in the west country during the holiday season before and will try not to again - nice weather means lots and lots of boats from the Solent are infesting the area!

We left a little before the tide turned westerly to help us as we wanted to avoid F4/5 over the tide around Start Point. The track is simple enough:

and the wobbles are thanks to the hordes of yachts / a few pot markers / the crew being at the helm.

Anyway, leaving Dittisham / Dartmouth felt kind of sad but we were in danger of getting charged council tax there. The river and town looked lovely on the way out:

 and the harbour entrance too:

The forecast F4 to 5 SW wind just didn't happen - 6 knots or so at some times so a pretty gentle trip that also allowed us to go close inshore at Start Point. A nice little run at around 1600rpm with no big dramas to report.

Plymouth must be very busy - the only slot we could find was at the Yacht Haven and although they are nice folks, you are stuck over at Mount Batten on the south side of everything. We booked in for a week and got ourselves a weekly bus ticket too!

Although we know the area pretty well, we still enjoy time here. A must do is a visit to Just Be a lovely little cafe come bistro come wine place at the foot of the bridges in Saltash. A most civilised light lunch was followed by a very naughty scone. Great place, great food. Wandering around the Hoe and city has to be done as well, especially on days like this:

We had an excellent day with Simon and Amanda - the folks who own the canal yard and hire fleet at Norbury Junction (see the post from March about our canal trip). We had a little run across to Cawsand Bay, anchored for a light lunch, chatted, talked about their glorious 100 foot Luxemotor barge conversion and generally chilled. They look like potential future Nordhavn owners - they liked the concept.

The bus ticket also took us to Tavistock, a lovely old town with obvious signs of the past wealth generated from the mining industry. Now it is home to the best carrot cake we have sampled since leaving Penarth:

Thanks  Dukes coffee house. The Pannier market, town centre and riverside walk were well worth a visit. Of course Robert and Deborah, the gin experts live nearby. We were unable to steal a gin from them as they were, most annoyingly, sailing around in Scotland. Bad timing.

Maintenance news:

Some time ago we mentioned the little "just in case" kit of wires that we had made up to bypass the automatic shutdown from our Seafire unit. This device would kill the main engine and genset if the automatic fire extinguisher system was triggered in the engine room or lazarette.

The Nordhavn folks had reported problems with a later version of this box, where it was failing and of course, cutting out the main engine. Our older one seems to be robust according to all the other owners - no failures reported. Still, we had some bridging wires ready just in case but the nice American Nordhavn folks supplied this dinky little engraved panel and switch as a neater, permanently installed and hence quick to deploy solution:

Some fun was had squeezing into the little cupboard where the Seafire unit (the black box in the background)  is installed and fitting the panel / wiring it up. Still, done now and more peace of mind. Not that the remote possibility of a failure and the need to undo a wire from the box was stopping us from sleeping. Perhaps we should also worry about a possible main engine crankshaft failure or Martians landing on the boat deck. Both seem as likely.