Bringing the boat home to Plymouth

Friday 1st June was pleasantly spent sorting the boat out, stowing food and other stuff, and the highlight for me was swinging from the mast to sort out some of the rigging.

We left on the high tide on Saturday morning and had a successful, if gruelling, 30 hour trip from Hayling Island, (between Southampton and Chichester), back to Dartmouth.
I was ok for the first few hours, but after that I 'slept' (see below) most of the way, rousing myself to help with a couple of minor crises and to make the occasional cup of tea. David and Vince did all the serious sailing stuff, doing 2 hour shifts through the night. Very impressive. We finally got to Dartmouth about 4pm Sunday

 ............ had a big feast of chili con carne and crashed out.

I would have liked to stay in Dartmouth for a few days, but the weather was good so it was decided we should set off again early Monday morning for Plymouth. It's a good job we did or we would have been stuck in Dartmouth, in horrible weather, for several days! Not long after we left I dived below and 'slept' a lot more!. I did manage to pop up and take a few pictures of the coast. We made it to Plymouth in only 6 hours and it was a lovely steady sail. We even got to play with the cruising chute (like a spinnaker) outside Plymouth

We got the boat tied up on her new mooring, and David went home Monday evening. Vince and I did a quick shop (we'd left the van in Plymouth earlier in the week) and crashed out on the boat again.

We got up to pouring rain on Tuesday, and as we'd been planning to come home anyway at some point we thought that was a good time to do it! We cowered in the boat doing 'stuff' all morning then escaped in the afternoon and eventually got home in the evening when we promptly had baths and a jolly good sleep. On Wednesday we went back down to finish off some more jobs, got the mooring ropes sorted out and had a clean up inside.

 That seemed to take all day, and then Thursday was taken up with driving to Hayling Island to collect my car! The weather was foul, but we were very very glad we weren't out at sea!

We went down to the boat yesterday to do some more sorting out ropes/electronics stuff, and I baked my first 'boat cakes' which Vince was very impressed with. It's a lovely simple 'stir it all together' muffin recipe my friend Ren gave me, and I didn't even have any eggs, but it worked out fine!

Vince and I near the end of our long trip
photo courtesy of David  http://www.yardoverland.co.uk/

The plan now is to sail down to Fowey Tuesday (when we hope it will have stopped raining!) and then on to Falmouth where there's a Sea Shanty Festival where some friends of ours will be singing, so that will be fun, even if it does rain!

Much shorter trips from now on, Fowey should only take about 4 hours, so I think I'll enjoy the sailing more.

More on Sleeping...

The above description of our trip was sent to some friends, several of whom thought it was great that I'd got to 'sleep' a lot. Below is a different definition of my sleeping during the trip...................

I spent most of the trip lying on the sofa/bunk, sometimes sleeping, sometimes just lying there, feeling ill cold etc. I tend to feel a bit seasick on long, rough trips anyway but the whole thing was made much worse for me this time by the fact that I was having my period, which, even on a good day in the comfort of my own big warm comfy house can make me lie on the floor groaning and feeling uncomfortable and generally sorry for myself. Lying inside a large fibreglass box that is constantly pitching and rolling, accompanied by flailing ropes and big ocean waves slapping and rushing against the sides of the boat, which are less than 2 feet from my head, made it not really like the 'sleeping' experience most people know of!