Dartmouth, Lakeland terriers and off to Plymouth

One of the joys of not working any more (actually, that should be "one of the many joys of not working any more") is that you have time to amble around, explore the places you visit with no time constraints and also talk to the people you bump into.

Hanging round outside the Dartmouth Chandlery was Archie, an achingly cute Lakeland terrier:

Of course, he was attached to a human as was his friend Rolo the Jack Russell. We chatted to the owners, then their better halves who emerged from the chandlery laden with clothing bags and of course we made a suitable fuss of the dogs. Later on we bumped into them again - we were not planning a dog-nap by the way.

Another chat ended up with John and Irene (who have a yacht in Scotland and were probably filling up a space we wanted to use last summer at Ballachulish....) having a RIB trip over to the boat to see what a Nordhavn is like. We figured that they are kind of a Newcastle version of Andrew and Linda - boating, mobile home, like Dartmouth and the West coast of Scotland. The accents are, of course, a little different and they don't seem to say "fair play" that often.

We managed a little boat polishing the following day (flybridge forward facing area, known to us as "the beak") and then went ashore to meet the new - Newcastle connection for coffee. That turned into coffee, prosecco and then dinner plus a 4 person and 2 dog farewell waving party as we left for Plymouth today. Lovely people, only the brass band was missing.

It was a glorious trip - wall to wall sunshine and a nice strong following tide to speed us along. Plenty of interesting VHF radio traffic too - one trawler nearly running down a small crab pot boat who had to cut loose their gear to escape. You could hear the panic in the small boat skipper's voice as he kept calling the trawler and got no reply. Later on, the coastguard spoke to the trawler skipper who, in a heavy Dutch accent, dismissed it totally. Nice seamanship.

Approaching Plymouth, there were warships from the UK, Portugal, Australia and Holland pottering about and playing with a submarine (one of ours apparently). We avoided the Dutch warship just in case.....

Just off Plymouth, you get the Great Mew stone:

and literally tens of tiny pot markers. We slalomed our way towards the Plymouth breakwater and about 2 miles out met a strange sight:

They are a bit out of focus as it was pretty bumpy for those little guys 2 miles out to sea. Our 40 tons and stabilisers were OK but they were getting thrown around quite a lot.

Plymouth greeted us with the famous view of the Hoe. For Spanish readers of this rubbish, see Wikipedia and we are sorry about what happened to your Armada:

Mayflower marina were as helpful as ever - two folks including the Managing Director came to take our lines as we berthed! MDL - take note.

Maintenance news:

None at all, sorry. However, we have lots and lots of polishing still to do and the forecabin is empty and ready to welcome any willing volunteers.