Plymouth to Fowey (yes, we found some space this time)

The tide times for a trip further west were a bit pesky. We REALLY wanted to get into Fowey for various reasons but we know that the 3 larger mooring buoys and the visitor pontoons get very busy in the season. So, the idea was to arrive late morning hoping that a few folks have already left from the night before. The other limiting factor was the tidal swirl around the breakwater pontoon in Mayflower. Backing out of our spot and the length of the breakwater at half tide when the stream is quite evil would have been highly amusing. So we just decided to leave around high tide and accept that we would have to push a little adverse current out to sea.

It was a gloomy start to the day. A bit gloomy on board too as we are not keen on setting the alarm clock. Heading out we opted to use the little channel that is OK with enough height of tide to save the trip around Drake's island. This is how it looks on the charts:

with two friendly little red and two green markers. At 6:30 am it looked like this:

Rather less appealing really. At high water(ish) we had plenty of depth to play with under the keel:

Still, as the wind was pretty much off the land we knew it would be a calm trip. We dodged a couple of anchored warships that were on the Cawsand side for a change (one of our Destroyers and one German Frigate) then headed out to sea. A nice simple route, just over three hours out there as we ran slowly to allow a few folks to depart the harbour in Fowey before we arrived:

On the way we had an annoyance too - apart from the obvious rafts of poorly marked pots that is. Our nice new alternator regulator was behaving rather well, running in "follower" mode where the batteries tell the Victron box what they want and the Victron monitoring box relays it to the regulator:

Only then it didn't. For some reason it stopped sending the battery voltage information through so the regulator, properly, stops the alternator from charging in case there is a wiring or battery fault:

Not a big problem though as we changed the feed into the regulator using the neat app. We have one wire that directly senses the battery voltage and so we used that feed instead and all was well again. An odd issue that we've seen twice now. Poor Paul from Maricom has it on his plate to chase the suppliers for information and a fix.

Arriving in a still slightly gloomy Fowey, we did the right thing and called the the harbour patrol folks who told us we could pick up one of the large visitor buoys near the harbour entrance. Well, we could have but.... the buoys are huge - maybe 2.5 metres diameter. The eye that the crew needs to put the mooring line through is dead in the middle. Our usual technique that has worked well everywhere else is for her to open the side access door, the captain brings the boat alongside the buoy, the crew simply leans over a little and threads the line through. Only her arms were not long enough for this one. Normally that would not be an issue as we have one of the nattily named "Jolly Hooker" devices on board specifically for this kind of challenge:

They will thread the line through for you. However, ours is stowed in the lazarette and as we'd inflated the little rollup dinghy, it was trussed up in the cockpit, over the top of the lazarette hatch. Wonderful. The crew could not move it on her own so we sneaked up river a little as we saw space on the mid-river pontoons. The harbour guys were happy enough for us to go onto one which made life easier. 

It felt good to be back in the place.  When we paid for the mooring and harbour dues, we discovered that our last visit had been in 2017. Way too long ago for this lovely place. Why? Because it has usually been rammed with boats and we've been turned away. Having Fowey as our registered port doesn't help it seems!

After a clean up and recovery time, the little dinghy and outboard took us ashore for a much needed leg stretch. Spot the Nordhavn time again:

Wandering around the town things were noticeably busier now that the school holidays were on. Unfortunately. Still a lovely place to visit though. We admired both the artistry and sentiment behind this, affixed to the wall of a local house:

Talking of artistry, old lifeboat crew boots have been most artistically given a second life:

Some inventive  folks around here.

The car ferry across to Bodinnick reminded us that we should do the circular walk - over to there, down to Polruan and then back on the foot passenger ferry. Only we were too tired after a bad night of sleep and an early start, so it got saved for another day:

We happily returned for an early dinner and chill time - we do like this place.

Things went a bit downhill on our second day here. A 5:30 am phone call from Toddlerville telling us that Mrs Toddler was far from well ended in her being in hospital again. A slightly more than stressful day followed, plenty of phone calls, messages and general gloom. The only good bit about being woken up then was that we got to see a china clay boat coming into the harbour and being swing by the tug before it was dragged upriver to the loading wharf:

We did take the dinghy ashore to get the legs working and we also went across to Polruan. As always, the fishing boat repair place called Toms was very busy, lots of welding and cutting and splashing paint about. Good to see:

They have a monster travelift there, 220 tons capacity. It would barely notice us in the strops. However as they will have been used for many barnacle encrusted fishing boats beforehand and we would end up in the yard next to a steel boat with grinding and welding going on, it isn't tempting. Anyone who has had to remove little brown rust marks left by particles of steel off their GRP boat will know why. The lift does look impressive though:

We wandered down to the ruined castle that used to protect the harbour entrance mainly to enjoy the view back towards Fowey:

Very Cornwall indeed.

We did some planning to see when would be a good time to head back to Penarth so the crew could get a train back to Hythe and Toddlerville. Tides and weather were consulted as we waited to hear how things were going in the hospital. Typically, the wind was stubbornly from the north or north west - more on the nose than you would really want for the trip once you round land's end and plod up the Cornish / Devon coastline. The prevailing SW stuff is quite nice for that run but was not in any forecast, short or long term. Such is life.

We had better news about Mrs Toddler the following day and our stress levels dropped a notch, however our liner curse was still working. This thing was anchored off the harbour and was shuttling in the normal lanyard and cruise pass wearing gloomy folks who shuffle around, look bemused and generally clog up the tiny pavements and streets in Fowey: