Dart life, Dittisham and meeting the locals

Well, life in Dartmouth proved to be busy and entertaining. John, Irene and Archie know the area around Dartmouth well, having spent many days here with their motorhome - remember that we first met them outside the Dartmouth chandlery. So, no need to act as "local" guides here! Instead we all had a day with Andrew and Linda, eating, strolling, drinking and "doing stuff".  The following day Andrew, Linda and their Nordhavn 43, Zephyros headed off for Guernsey, following John and Kath who had left a day earlier and significantly faster too in their Broom 39. Our guests then organised a hire car and left to collect their motorhome from the Hamble. It went very quiet.

Or did it? Bernie and Jenni were in town, they have a house here - remember the man with a collection of old Triumph cars and wooden boats including Mimosa the Dunkirk little ship?

The boat, Bernie and Jenni are about to star in the new "Dunkirk" film being released in July, by the way.  So, we had an entertaining evening starting in a tapas bar, meeting half the local inhabitants (or so it seemed), moving on to the locals' pub (The Dolphin in case you want to try it), meeting the other half and then sneaking into the Floating Bridge pub just before the kitchen closed for excellent and good value fish and chips.

Life has a habit of finding unexpected things for you to do. Well, one of the local folks we met has a Bichon / Westie cross called Noodles who we ended up taking for walks:

including up to Bernie and Jenni's house for brunch and out to Dartmouth Castle. Thanks for loaning him to us Tracie!

The castle and St Petrox church make an odd but lovely couple:

We moved the boat from the marina up to Dittisham and picked up the one 18 metre visitor buoy that can hold us (there used to be 3 but the harbour master has gone and rented two of them out for the entire summer). Hum. As they say that they don't allow boats bigger than 14m on the Dartmouth mid-river pontoons the options for us are pretty limited here. Dartmouth Harbour Master - please read and take note, we are quite harmless and placid.....

Dittisham is another died and gone to heaven spot. A walk around the village and an evening swinging about on the buoy in glorious sun was just perfect.

We came back into the town and plonked ourselves onto the "max 14 m" deepwater pontoon that we have stayed on many times before. The harbour staff never seem to mind and are invariably friendly. Views astern included a nice square rigger that visited for one night:

Nice to see sail and rowing activity on the river.

The Kingswear steam train kept us amused as always with suitable noises and smoke:

A little polishing (just to keep our hands in you know!) and some nice walks (with and without Noodles) followed.

From Kingswear, there is a bus service to Brixham or Paignton. We fancied revisiting Brixham and even Torquay, as we haven't visited there since owning this boat. Previously we had a MDL card thanks to our house in Hythe marina which gave us free overnight stays in both places. As they want silly visitor rates now, we simply refuse to give our beloved MDL £4.65 a metre for a stay. Especially as they measured our boat and found it significantly longer then any other marina has managed! Going by bus was way better.

Torquay seemed less "sad" than we remembered it. Perhaps that was because the sun was shining? They have one of the observation wheel thingies in place, they seem to be becoming the seaside towns must have accessory:

Bearing in mind the average age of the visitors we saw, we are not sure how busy this will be.

The old seaside town "must have", a pavilion, was closed:

and most concerning was the sign on the door referring any queries to the MDL marina office. Our favourite business seems to have got some hold over the lovely old building that is gently falling apart. Poor pavilion. See Devon on line news article for what is planned.

Brixham was much like it always was - a working fishing port with fewer pretensions. Mind you, a seafront cafe seems to have got into the decorated gorilla trend in a big way:

We also enjoyed an afternoon / evening at Bernie and Jenni's place, overlooking the town from on high and being royally looked after. Jenni had just invested in a new hot tub. She seemed pleased with it:

or she might have been pleased with the red wine of course.

As a last activity, we borrowed a 1998 Renault Scenic from Bernie's car fleet (yes, significantly newer than the 1970 Triumph 2000 that starred in the blog a while ago) and visited Gara Rock. We walked the cliff path to the Salcombe harbour entrance and just drank in the views:

Despite having to climb the hilly bits (remember, the crew is half Dutch and they don't have too many hills to practice on) it was a great day, only spoilt a little by Noodles finding some nice fresh poo to rub himself in..... Wet wipes are a great invention.

St Peter Port to Dartmouth

The strong(ish) SW'ly wind was due to drop and turn to a NW 4 to 5. This was going to help us by dropping the size of the swells from the west that were rolling in but would mean that we might get some waves on the nose as we approached Dartmouth - the NW wind would have been blowing consistently for about 12 hours and would be building up some "chop". The real win was that the closer we got to Dartmouth, the shorter the fetch and so the gentler the waves would be.

Decision made, we also opted for a civilised departure time so we could stay in the Victoria marina overnight. The cill in the marina was not going to cover sufficiently for us to escape until around 9am so no silly (sorry for the feeble attempt at humour) alarm call was needed. It did decide to rain a little as we headed out and we had a large audience of yotties who popped out from their sprayhoods and wanted to see us hit something (not them presumably) as we backed off the berth and then wriggled astern around a pontoon so we could motor out. Pressure on - had to do it without using the thrusters to show the yotties that big fat motorboats can manoeuvre properly.

Heading up the Little Russel channel we had good tidal help even though it was not spring tide time any more:

10.9 knots over the ground is really flying for us. Nosebleed territory indeed. As we are all pretty robust, no blood was shed but a few squeals of excitement were heard.

For this trip the tides were a pain - carrying us to the east to begin with. This spoils taking the "direct" route across the channel to Dartmouth, which misses the SW corner of the TSS where the big guys play. What to do? Two choices - one is to push the tide to get far enough west to avoid the TSS and then, ironically, we would have to push the tide when it turns the other way to avoid ending up in Plymouth not Dartmouth. The other is to let the tide push us to the east, cross the TSS at the compulsory 90 degrees (still getting pushed east as we have to steer to cross at 90 degrees, not have a water track at 90 degrees) and then let the tide unwind this drift after it turns later on, helping to push us back towards Dartmouth. Mental maths (dangerous at our age) said to do the latter hence the track below:

There was a residual swell from the stiff SW'ly winds of the previous few days. So, we had a couple of metres of swell on the port quarter which the stabilisers duly countered. Some of the bigger ones were coming in at pilothouse window height - an unusual experience for Irene who coped with it very well indeed. The forecast suggested that the swell would die down as we hit mid-channel and it did so right on cue. They also said that there would be fog banks and they were spot on again - of course this happened in the TSS as we were dodging the big guys but the AIS and radar didn't mind.

Lunch in the pilothouse turned into quite a civilised affair:

Archie suits the napkin so well, all he needs is a dinner jacket and a monacle to complete the look.

The NW'ly wind that was predicted to increase during the afternoon duly did so giving us a few little waves on the nose for the last few miles of the run into Dartmouth. A chance to throw a little spray around.

The grey gloom had lifted and we also had a pod of dolphins come past us to liven things up. Poor Archie had no idea why all of his humans were squealing in delight when there was no food or alcohol being consumed.

We arrived in a quiet Dartmouth after a 10.5 hour trip and happily deposited ourselves on the free hammerhead in Dart Marina. Yes, we used a marina so Archie had a simple "walkashore". He definitely needed easy access upon arrival.  He had attempted a wee on passage but was seriously put off when his chosen spot (the windward scupper in the aft cockpit) gushed sea water, resulting in soggy paws. Archie was not amused.

We had booked the marina and were told to phone just as we entered the harbour. We did so, only the number came up as an invalid one. No matter, John and Kath (the Broom 39 folks you've met on here before) were berthed in the marina already and John came to meet us. Zephyros (Andrew and Linda, the Welsh connection) were also around, on the mid-river pontoon that we normally frequent. Quite an impending social whirl really.

The harbour is as glorious as ever of course:

Maintenance news:

The trip helped to correct the slight list to port that we always have when both the wing fuel tanks are full. This is because the boat was originally ballasted for the first owner with a huge RIB on the boat deck. Our Avon is smaller and lighter than his monster tender and hence the "over ballasting" to port that exists. We did look at removing some but it has been so beautifully encapsulated in GRP that cutting it out would be a messy nightmare and one that didn't seem worth living through.