Dartmouth to Falmouth

The weather was playing ball nicely and so we opted for a trip all the way to Falmouth rather than stopping off in some of our favourite haunts like the Yealm and Fowey. Why? Well, there was some nasty stuff forecast for a few days away and being slightly stuck in the Yealm, as pretty as it is, might get a bit frustrating. We would get to know the one Co-op store rather too well.  Why not Fowey - similar reason really and the Fowey mini-market is even less appealing. Instead we opted to head for the fleshpots of Falmouth with the idea of nipping around the corner to Cardiff when a suitable weather window popped up.

Tides are always a compromise. As it was "springy" the ebb tide in the river would be quite evil and so we left closer to high water than was optimal for the trip. It just meant pushing a bit of tide for the first hour or so. No matter as it was a glorious sunny start to the day around 8am: 

The houses clinging to the hillside in Dartmouth were bathed in nice autumnal morning light, as was the harbour entrance:

Ditto the castle and St Petrox church as we passed them heading out to sea:

It was beautifully calm, light winds and great visibility. Off Start Point and Salcombe we had to do the usual pot marker avoidance thing but that was fine. Around Eddystone lighthouse there was more boat traffic - plenty of fishing craft out, way more than on the AIS image below:

The sea around the rocks and lighthouse was pretty smooth as you can see:

Some dolphins swam past but didn't want to play despite lots of encouragement to join us from the crew:

We were just not appealing for some reason, normally they like our speed and enjoy bow wave riding but not this time. The weather really was idyllic, you can see how little wind there was from the red ensign:

and the prop wash was about the only thing disturbing the water surface:

BTW - the high noise level is a bit confusing. The camera picked up and then amplified the noise coming through the engine room vents quite nicely. It really is not that loud when you stand in the aft cockpit, most of the noise comes from the wash itself.

Our route which goes directly from south of Start Point to the entrance of Falmouth harbour takes us just south of Eddystone but very close to this guy near Dodman Point so we thought we would share him with you in all his yellow and bird poo glory:

Arriving in Falmouth the larger mooring buys off the town which we like using were all occupied - three of them by yachts that were way too small for the 18 metre capacity. Naturally some smaller buoys were free but... Instead we upset the bank manager and stopped in Port Pendennis for a change. We didn't want to be "up river" this time. 

The trip took about 9.5 hours and was sunny and calm. A perfect motorboating sort of day. Not much use for the yottie types though:

4.8 knots wind speed - nothing was sailing anywhere fast.

Maintenance news: Nothing exciting to report at all. We had topped up the coolant level for the main engine a little in Dartmouth after the couple of good runs (the coolant had been changed whilst out of the water earlier this month) to move all the air bubbles about. Annoyingly the CMOS battery for the navigation PC is toast but that can / will have to wait until we are tied up for the winter as dismembering the PC involves removing lots of cables (5 COM ports, 3 USB connections, 2 ethernet ports) and then getting the right battery.