Relaxing (?) in the Fal

After a peaceful night on the lovely Ruan mid-river pontoon and a chance to catch up on sleep, we decided to head into Falmouth town. Simon, our rather excellent extra crew person, had a train booked back home from there the following day and it is quite a hike by RIB (especially in the forecast rain). So, we slowly pottered down the estuary, with Simon looking very relaxed at the helm - his new spot (to use a Sheldon Cooperism):

We opted not to pick up one of the mooring buoys - again as heavy rain was forecast for the time of Simon's departure. We tried to get a spot in Port Pendennis but no, they were full (bodes badly for later in the season) with superyachts being fettled by the Pendennis yard guys and a few other assorted working craft. This forced us to use the wildly expensive and not at all fitted out in a manner to befit the price "Falmouth Haven". The harbour authority have stuffed up their prices to above those of Port Pendennis now - supply and demand we guess. The infrastructure and shelter is still no where like their competition and they still have a weird power supply system using top up cards that you cannot top up until they run out (unless you are lucky and get the same chip card second time around). 

Arriving at low water was not planned or ideal. Calling them on the radio elicited no reply. Phoning just got an answering message. So, we gently berthed alongside an empty run of pontoon with our depth sounder going to 0.0 metres and plenty of mud being stirred up. A truly premium place.

Despite Simon only having sailing boots, he manfully managed the walk to Penryn (40 minutes) where we had promised him excellent coffee and outstanding cinnamon buns at the Muddy Beach cafe:

only the outside view was not as good as this borrowed picture (way more cloud), they no longer sell the awesome cinnamon buns and the coffee was weak. New ownership of the place and what turned out to be our last visit. Shame as it had been so good for so long. The exercise was good for us though.

The next day we joined Simon on a very busy little train to Truro and said our thanks and farewells as he headed home. After a wander into town, we met up with Norman and Julie who took us to a favourite and dog friendly pub in Devoran for lunch. Stanley seemed quite bored by things until the food arrived:

whereas Indie was ever hopeful in true labrador fashion:

It was great to see all four of them after our house / dog sitting time at the end of last year.

Maintenance news:

That pesky satellite compass had some attention. No, not from a hammer, no matter how tempting that was. The captain has a copy of the Furuno maintenance and repair manual that is given to dealers for it and so we read it carefully again. The parameter that allows the heading to be "held" and output for a while even if the GPS data gets corrupted was set to "off". We know it was "on" at the end of last year when we finished cruising. So, that was fixed and various other tests run on the three GPS antenna sitting in the dish up top:

Why the setting changed is beyond us, a bit like why the AIS changed us into a fishing vessel of 45 metres in length over one winter! Still, it has been reset and the hardware all checks out OK. One of the three GPS receivers might be in trouble? Time will tell....