Falmouth to Plymouth

Having given up on going north owing to the grim weather forecasts and because we needed to be back in our winter berth a little earlier this year, we had some decisions to make. Back to Penarth stupidly early or spend a bit more time on the south coast? The staying out thing won. As there was going to be one day without strong westerly winds in the whole week ahead, we opted to use it and head back on ourselves, to Plymouth. A better place to hide out in during rainy  / blowy weather than places like Fowey or Salcombe as it has proper food shops, walk ashore berthing, trains and buses and other civilisation if we want to take advantage of such things.

Leaving Falmouth early (for us) in the morning to catch a fair tide, the sky was suitably inviting:

A rather large and equally ugly Italian built motor boat headed off at the same time, only way faster, gently draining an oil well as they headed west:

The noise and wash when they put on power were not appealing.

 The one big difference to the many days before this one was this:

7 knots of wind and from varying directions too. The sea had calmed down from the gales and was quite pleasant for a change. The route is a lovely simple one, just a few "jinks" to avoid yachts and fishing boats plus the odd poorly marked fishing pot.

A nice 6 hour run - the stabilisers were not bothered too much, apart from one rain shower it was fine and we had lots of dolphins heading west passing us. Never seen so many little groups of them out and about before. They always liven up any journey. 

Entering Plymouth sound, the Military were out and about in their landing craft:

heading to Cawsand bay. Landing practice on the beach? Perhaps they had heard about the nice lunches over there? As the tide height was suitable we could sneak through the bridge rather than go around Drake's Island and then push a strong outgoing tide up to Mayflower marina. We'd been given a nice big hammerhead berth so we settled down there and then went for a walk up to the Naval base area as the sun had deigned to join us. Lovely views over the harbour area:

and an unexpectedly excellent coffee in a little seasonal kiosk near the outdoor swimming pool too.

The evening view across to the Royal William yard in the sun was lovely. We cherished it knowing that for the next few days it might be a little greyer:

A cruise liner update for you too - we posted the strange routes that some of the liners had taken between ports wondering why they seemed intent on burning more fuel than needed. Ken, the Northern Ireland man who you've met in here before enlightened us to a possible cause. He was a ship's agent and said that liners might need longer out to sea than the trip needs just to "process" their black and grey water tanks. Quite a thought to end on.