A Giant Leap North

Tuesday was still too windy for our liking, so we decided to remain in the marina at Falmouth for another day.  Having completed our chores the day before, we felt free to take a walk to look at the white horses in the bay north of the town.  Then we set off along the coast towards Pendennis Point until a heavy rain shower made us choose a path that led upwards through the sheltering trees.

As we emerged from the top of the path, we found ourselves at the entrance gate to Pendennis Castle which is an English Heritage property.  Having paid their entry fee, we made our way into this impressive site and had a very interesting time exploring their many buildings ranging from Henry VIII castle to the Half Moon Battery that was used to keep the Luftwaffe and the German E-Boats out of Falmouth during WWII.

View out from the battlements of Pendennis Castle

Doug managed to have a personal guided tour of the full range of artillery in one part of the castle grounds as a volunteer from English Heritage lifted the rope barrier and walked him though all the weaponry.

Doug being shown the guns by the friendly volunteer 

We toured the extensive castle grounds and looking out to sea, were rather glad not to be there!

View across the mouth of the Fal River to St Anthony Head

Next day, we dropped our lines and, with reefed main and our No 2 jib, we headed out to sea towards Lizard Point.  The wind was SE F4-6 but should be moderating later in the day and into tomorrow.  

With northerlies forecast in a couple of days’ time, we had decided to make use of this helpful wind to push on and make a big leap up to Wales.

Rounding the Lizard with a reefed main

We had a cracking sail in blustery sunshine and carried the tide all round the Lizard and on past Lands End, moving at 9 knots some of the time.

We passed the most western point of land “Cape Cornwall” at 18:40 with 98 miles still to cover to reach our intended destination of Skomer Island, off Milford Haven the following day.

We do try to avoid night sailing as it’s hard to get enough sleep(!) but the wind was in a helpful direction - SE becoming E and was starting to moderate, so we pressed on into the night.  We took 3 hr watches and I swapped with Doug at midnight.

An hour later, I was becoming concerned with a large and slow-moving survey vessel that was listed on AIS as being "restricted manoeuvrability" that was slowly edging onto a collision course with us.  She was named the Kommandor Iona and soon after I had woken Doug to discuss her, she called us up on the VHF saying she had a 400m tow behind her and could we please go a bit faster to avoid a collision as she was unable to slow down.  We started our engine and were able to just move ahead of her.  How we managed to land up in the same spot in the huge Bristol Channel is a mystery but was also a real nuisance to both of us!

Kommandor Iona Survey/Research Vessel

Half an hour later, collision avoided, we could turn our engine off and Doug returned to his bunk 😊 zzzz.

There was a rather lovely dawn at about 04:30, helping us to feel better about having been at sea overnight.

Dawn breaking in the Bristol Channel

We could see Skomer and her sister island Skokholm ahead of us but the final 25 miles were hard work with the wind dropping and a southerly tide setting in to slow our progress.

There was nothing for it, so we started the engine to assist the sails and crept forward at only 3 knots over the ground inching our way towards Skomer’s North Haven and (hopefully) a free mooring buoy.

We were fortunate that there was an available buoy and we very gratefully tied on at 10:35 after 23 hours at sea – a decent leap north from Falmouth!

Rapport moored in North Haven, Skomer