Falmouth back to Penarth

The tide times were pretty kind, allowing us to leave at a reasonably civilised 7am or so. There were a couple of tankers and one freight ship anchored in the bay to the south of Falmouth and of course all of them were on the route the autopilot wanted to take:

They are the blue triangles that sit cosily close to the grey course line. It kept us awake, dodging the pot markets and the ships. Funnily enough, the ships were way easier to spot.

Passing the Manacles buoy, we saw a serious number of seabirds, mainly gannets, diving into the water and several dolphins engaged in a feeding frenzy that must have decimated the shoal of fish around them. The dolphins were so keen to eat their fill that only a few of them wanted to come and play in our bow wave. Quite a spectacle. 

We gave Lizard point a good clearance as it was the usual bumpy stuff, around there, heading almost as far out as some of the smaller commercial ships, like this little container feeder thing:

As we approached Land's End so it got fruitier, pretty much as expected. The wind was on the nose, the tide was, as planned, luckily slightly against us but all the same the waves were a reasonable size and there was plenty of pitching going on. The crew was helming at the time and the captain was in the engine room checking that all was well with the big Lugger and pumping some fuel from the storage tanks into the supply tank. Down there might be noisy and hot but there is way less movement than higher up in the pilothouse. Plenty of spray over the boat to wash off when we get back....

Here is the first part of the route:

We cut close inshore at Land's End as you get a nice "back eddy" from the tide that takes you north even though the main tidal flow was still running to the south. Free fuel time. As we turned to head up the Cornish coastline the sea conditions were "interesting". Several days of a NW wind had dragged up some fair sized waves that were on top of the normal swell coming across the Atlantic from the SW. The result was a bit of a sloppy mess which the stabilisers worked hard to counteract. We normally run the boat with the stabilisers set to a speed of 12 knots. Obviously the faster they think you are going, the less they think they need to move to counteract any roll. The boat runs nicely like that, gentler movements and way less wear and tear on the stabiliser bearings too. Well, to keep the boat stable we had to wind the speed setting down a lot:

The black bars show how far the fins are moving - that is about 2/3 deflection. We failed to get a picture showing them at full movement which was needed quite a lot. 

We plodded along the coast, it got dark and the FLIR was in action again. Approaching Hartland Point, the crew was again at the helm and this time the captain was having a snooze. The crew described the sea state seen on the FLIR as "like a washing machine". It does get messy there! We crawled through it pushing against the tide and into calmer waters as we progressed through the Bristol Channel:

Hartland point is where the NE track "kinks" towards the east. This image of the route misses out the first part from Falmouth. Why? Because we are mean and refuse to pay a subscription to the folks like Marine Traffic so we only get 24 hours worth of track available. The trip took 27.

As we approached Cardiff we wanted to make the 10:15 lock in rather than mess about for a half hour in the slightly foggy, gloomy conditions outside. So, our 1650 rpm cruise speed was wound up to 1800 (wild extravagance with the fuel) and then a good wide open throttle burn for the final bit to clean up the exhaust and engine innards. There is a fuel burn table in the useful stuff section of the blog but to give you an idea with a heavily laden boat (nearly full of fuel) we were burning around 11 lph to do 6.4 knots (that included the extra diesel needed as the stabilisers were VERY active). Running at 2350 to do 8.5 knots in calmer water used 33.5 lph. The law of diminishing returns and all that.

We were alone locking in to the barrage - in fact we didn't see any other pleasure craft after Land's End, perhaps as it wasn't really pleasurable out there. The guys operating the lock came out for a chat and told us how much they liked the boat. We got VIP treatment, lock to ourselves and as soon as we were ready they locked us through, no waiting for the allotted time. A friendly greeting from the Penarth marina folks and we happily berthed back in "our spot" after a struggle to turn the boat around in the weedy conditions (the weed grabs the long keel and kind of stops you from spinning round as you would in clearer, deeper waters). Normally we are not in Penarth during peak weed growing season!

The trip was a 27 hour one, no dramas on the maintenance front to report. We did top up the coolant a little the following day. No visible leaks though and not much was put in. The big Lugger, overhauled stabilisers and navigation gear all behaved as did the Zeus alternator regulator. It still does not like using the "high tech" connection to the battery management system via the Victron monitoring box. That just drops out after a while. However, the simple bit of wire that senses battery voltage works perfectly. Old tech, just like the captain and crew perhaps.

Having made it to Penarth we booked a train ticket for the crew so she could get back to Toddlerville and look after Mr T and visit Mrs T in hospital. The captain would stay a few days to tidy up the boat and do some of the "must do" maintenance things. To try and stay awake plus get some exercise,  we even dug out the bikes and went for a cycle trip into the city. Actually, it felt good - some stress relief time.