A Nordhavn rally in Fowey

After a lovely sleepless night, a little shopping and a meet up with Amanda and Chris who joined us for lunch, we doubled the local quota of Nordhavns. Andrew and Linda (the Welsh connection who previously had adopted our forecabin) arrived in their 43, Zephyros.

There was a spot for them on the same pontoon and we hoped that there was no more local dredging needed. We met them by RIB in the harbour entrance, they arrived just as the yacht club was off for a race:

Zephyros threaded her way through the tacking dinghies and upriver:

There isn't one embedded in the starboard side of Zephyros, just a perspective thing.

Whilst enjoying Fowey, you have to walk down to Readymoney beach, watch the folks enjoying the water and wonder at why they put concrete fir-cone tops on the building:

You also have to do the Hall walk. The initial drag up the steep hill at Bodinnick is well worth it for the views of the town:

even if some folks need a breather after the climb:

Pill was as lovely as ever:

and the boatyard at Polruan had a trawler up on the slip as normal:

You know how paints have very specific coating instructions as to preparation, temperature, spray pressure and gun type, viscosity, wet film thickness, numbers of coats etc etc? Well, Jotun must have written one that says "spray over rust, old paint, flaking old paint, old antifouling etc  from any distance you wish and there is no need for any personal protection gear":

The Health and Safety police clearly don't make it to Polruan very often.

A double dinghy trip up towards Lostwithiel was a little different. We left a little later than planned (wanted to catch high water up there) after Andrew's outboard decided to go all coy on us and not pee gently out of the cooling water tell tale. However, he did look very Crocodile Dundeeish heading upstream:

Could Fowey be renamed Walkabout Creek?

The buildings on the river are lovely:

And St Winnow and the church look great from the water too:

We turned around a little before Lostwithiel to head back as we arrived around high tide and it wasn't too deep anyway. Some proper hooligan types in a scruffy old speedboat with an equally scruffy 25HP old Mercury engine came past us on the narrow part of the river but planing. The poor ducklings really did not know what hit them - must have been like a tsunami for them. A little further downriver, we saw them with the outboard tilted up paddling back. They yelled across to us that "it is shallow here, don't go any further". We needed to and so paddled though that bit! You can only guess how much damage they did when they hit the gravelly bank at lots of knots. Watching the outboard kick up and rev itself senseless must have been spectacular. The ducklings revenge perhaps?

Andrew had a charting app on his phone and so led us down the deepest channel back to the motherships nicely.

Robert and Deborah, the large Nauticat folks (Stephen and Alison have been relegated to the small Nauticat folks now, but he does have a nice 911 to make up for that) are members of the Fowey Gallants yacht club and said it was a must visit place. So we did:

Lovely river views from the balcony too, good food, sensible prices, friendly people. Be afraid Fowey Gallants, we will be back.