Visit by a good friend Rob. New AIS fitted and needed testing. Rob has his commercial yacht masters ticket and quite a bit of experience so we decided to go out and try the boat out in strong winds. The forecast was South-westerly, force 7, increasing to force 8. We headed down from our mooring, at Noss on the Dart and put a reef in the main, then headed out. We broad reached out and believe it or not, we were the ONLY boat out in Start Bay. The seas weren’t all that large but it was blowing off the tops of the waves. We practised tacking, making tea and such like. We then hove-to and drank our tea and ate our sandwiches. Brixham Coastguard came on the radio to warn of a strong wind, force 8. We put another reef in and set off for another sail. The anometer was reading 43, gusting to 48 knots. I rang the Coast Watch Lookout Station to see if we were registering on their radar and the person on watch confirmed the conditions and told me we must be MAD. No way, we were enjoying every minute of it. We even got the old girl up to 8.4 knots, which is about her maximum speed. We came back into Dartmouth with a lot of confidence in Fai Tira, an exercise we needed to do.
First Trip This Year. New chart plotter fitted and needed testing. It’s the kids’ holidays again and we were lucky enough to have my (Pete’s) brother -in- law and family down for a few days. The ladies didn’t want to sail, so it was just the boys; me, Simon and Edward. John was otherwise engaged. We decided to head for the River Yealm and Noss Mayo. It’s a great place to visit and I like the Ship Inn with their excellent food. We set off with brilliant weather, although the wind was a bit light. We motor-sailed part of the way, enjoying the Spring sunshine. We had a bit of downwind sailing so we decided to try out the brand new spinnaker. We had the pole out and the spinnaker up the mast but try as hard as we could, we couldn’t get the snuffer up. We had to take it down most disappointed. We duly arrived on the Yealm and moored on the visitors’ pontoon to be rewarded with a great sunset. Edward rowed us ashore and we spent a nice night in the Ship Inn.Wednesday 15th April 2009. Weather not so good. The wind is from the East which meant close- hauling back. No sunshine. It was all quite uneventful until the wind completely dropped just as we entered Start Bay. The visibility suddenly dropped to about 50 yards and we heard thunder. It was very eyrie. The thunder got louder and louder until the heavens opened and we were surrounded by a full on thunder storm. “Simon please let go of the shrouds and come in the cockpit”. Being a steel boat we are much better off if lightning strikes because the boat acts as a faraday cage. We arrived in Dartmouth soaked to the skin just in time for the sun to come out. A nice couple of days.
Sunday 12th October 2008 Fai Tira heads west. The decision was made to go to Falmouth rather than go to Guernsey due to the wind direction which was South Easterly and light. It would have meant motoring for 12 hours. We wanted to go sailing so we decided to go west. We set the alarm for 4.00am and woke up to see not a lot, other than FOG, “Let’s go back to bed John,” I said, “see you at first light”. First light, 7.00am brought us even thicker fog. We waited until about 10.00am when the fog started to lift.
We set off now bound for Noss Mayo. The sun came out as we got to Start Point.
We had a lovely sail to Noss Mayo arriving at about 4.00pm just in front of another Bruce Roberts boat, actually sailed by two guys, one called Bruce and the other called Robert. How spooky is that?
Monday 13th October 2008 Fai Tira heads further west. We woke up at 06.30am and set off for Fowey. The wind was in the west so we were beating down the coast to our destination. Fai Tira was set-up perfectly and she sailed herself at 5.5 knots towards the Eddistone Lighthouse. After a couple of tacks the wind dropped off and we started the engine and headed straight towards Fowey. It was once said to me that “Gentlemen never sail against the wind they use their engine.” We did this and the damn thing kept stopping. Bugger!!!! John decided the problem was fuel so he changed one of the in-line fuel filters. This seemed to do the trick so we managed to arrive in Fowey without any drama. We then changed the other filters and went down the pub.
Tuesday 14th October 2008 Fai Tira heads home. We set off in the dark at 5.30am with me on the helm and hit a mooring buoy and damaged the self steering gear. Bugger again! I was so mad with myself but yet another learning experience. As the light appeared over the horizon the wind came up and we started to sail at 5 knots towards Dartmouth. John was on the helm as I was down below when I heard John shout “DOLPHINS.” 6 dolphins joined us for 20 miles from Fowey to Plymouth. My best dolphin experience ever. The amazing thing was that they responded to the attention they were getting from us. When we moved away from the bowsprit they started jumping out of the water to attract our attention again. This really raised our spirits and helped me forget the damage caused earlier.
We arrived in Dartmouth about 4.30pm just as it started to rain. Immaculate timing. We had a great trip and learnt quite a bit about the boat and ourselves.
Training Starts in Earnest. Well in Fai tira really.
John and myself leave Dartmouth on a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon. The intention was to get to grips with the JRC radar. There was lots of traffic out in Start Bay so we had lots of targets on the screen. I worked through the manual and managed how to suss out how to use the many features the JRC has. The radar is not an up to date all singing model but will be sufficient for what we need. John took the helm and enjoyed sailing the boat around the bay whilst I tried to steer him away from any obstacles.
We took Fai Tira out for a sail in Start Bay. The weather was good and we headed off to Start Point. I wanted to try out the wind vane steering so we got the boat set up on a course and then deployed the wind vane it was working really well. A result, I thought, until the time came to take it down. Fai Tira sailed on, on her own, with nobody at the wheel. What a well set up boat. We decided to anchor off at Hallsands. Edward got straight into the fishing and a couple of big mackerel were caught. We decided to sail back just using the cruising chute. This was a bit of a learning experience as we didn’t have enough lines and shackles to make it work properly but we got it flying and we ended up doing 9 knots across the Bay back to Dartmouth.
Lunch time we were joined in Dartmouth by Judy’s sister Tracey her husband, Simon and their two children Maisie and Edward. They had had an awful time camping in North Cornwall near Polzeath because of bad weather “RAIN and more RAIN”. We discussed sailing to either Noss Mayo or Salcombe depending on the forecast.
Thursday.
We decided to just have a local sail on Thursday to see how they got on and then pick up a visitors’ mooring at Dittisham. Well, at 16:00 after Judy had been to the doctors and Tracey had visited the beautician we were ready to go. We set off and had a great sail and ended up anchoring just down stream from the Anchor Stone, how spooky is that??? Whilst there we had a picnic and Ed and Maisie went to the top of the mast. How very brave of them both?
Friday.
We headed off in good weather to Salcombe with a bit of a head wind so we were having to tack most of the way until we rounded Start Point Edward caught some mackerel and gutted them himself. On arrival in Salcombe were faced with hundreds of dinghy’s racing towards us. It was the Salcombe Regatta. We picked up a mooring just off the town. The wind was increasing and the weather deteriorating. We launched the tender in torrential rain and headed for the pub. Saturday. We all lay in bed until 11:30 listening to the rain. The plan was to leave with a favourable tide at 16:30 which we did. We left Salcombe harbour and encountered large crazy mixed up seas and a strongish wind, force 5-6. We motor sailed through this confusion until we rounded Start Point where we were able to switch the engine off. We had two poorly crew on board being sick and feeding the fish every few minutes. >.
We arrived in Dartmouth after three hours and the heaven opened once more. We decided to moor on the town quay and all headed back to Clarence Hill for a warm bath and then bed. An interesting weekend was had by all with the normal highs and lows. I hope my crew weren’t put off by the experience!!!
Visit by a good friend Rob. New AIS fitted and needed testing. Rob has his commercial yacht masters ticket and quite a bit of experience so we decided to go out and try the boat out in strong winds. The forecast was South-westerly, force 7, increasing to force 8. We headed down from our mooring, at Noss on the Dart and put a reef in the main, then headed out. We broad reached out and believe it or not, we were the ONLY boat out in Start Bay. The seas weren’t all that large but it was blowing off the tops of the waves. We practised tacking, making tea and such like. We then hove-to and drank our tea and ate our sandwiches. Brixham Coastguard came on the radio to warn of a strong wind, force 8. We put another reef in and set off for another sail.
Wednesday 15th April 2009. Weather not so good. The wind is from the East which meant close- hauling back. No sunshine. It was all quite uneventful until the wind completely dropped just as we entered Start Bay. The visibility suddenly dropped to about 50 yards and we heard thunder. It was very eyrie. The thunder got louder and louder until the heavens opened and we were surrounded by a full on thunder storm. “Simon please let go of the shrouds and come in the cockpit”. Being a steel boat we are much better off if lightning strikes because the boat acts as a faraday cage. We arrived in Dartmouth soaked to the skin just in time for the sun to come out. A nice couple of days.
