To Guernsey and Beyond!

We're cruising again, this time with crew. Great friends Barbara and Steve, veterans of several voyages aboard Maunie, and her predecessor Gentoo, have joined us and it's lovely to have their company. After a wild (30 knots) shakedown sail on Tuesday, we crossed the Channel on Wednesday in a 'game of two halves' passage. For the first 4-5 hours we had no wind but the westerly breeze then kicked in for a very nice beam reach into Guernsey. Shame the visibility was less than a mile for most of it!

We're now in the Victoria Marina, St Peter Port, and the conditions are still and sunny so our onward passage to Brittany later today will be a motor, unfortunately.

A few photos from St Peter Port:

The view towards the harbour

The entrance to the marina, with a cill (under water dam) retaining water to keep the visiting yachts afloat when the tide drops

In the outer harbour there are some all-tide access pontoons which were very busy

There's a big tidal range here

The dawn arrival of a cruise ship

BACK TO DARTMOUTH

 We're safely back in our home port after a brilliant couple of weeks aboard. In contrast to the light winds of the first part of the trip, we had cracking conditions to propel us back to Falmouth and then on to the Yealm and finally to Dartmouth.

There's a short video of the rolling spinnaker run from Scilly HERE

In Falmouth we managed to get a berth for a night in the excellent Port Pendennis marina for restocking, showers and a much needed laundry. The other side of our pontoon was populated by some huge yachts:

The J Class 'Hanuman', a replica of the British yacht Endeavour II, but with some very modern rig and deck gear.

There's a short video of the boat racing in the Caribbean HERE

As ever, the  ore modestly proportioned byt equally lovely Maunie looked after us very well in this voyage and the relaxed nature of the cruise gave us time to reorganise things on board. Storage lockers were systematically emptied, cleaned and their contents rationalised so we feel that she's ready for the next trip - in a couple of weeks.

Dodging the Scilly Rocks - or Not

The Isles of Scilly have claimed many ships over the centuries - the most famous disaster was in 1707 when four Royal Navy warships, commanded by the splendidly-named Sir Cloudesley Shovel, misjudged their position after days at sea returning from the Bay of Biscay. They all foundered on the unlit rocks and about 2000 sailors perished - an event which drove the journey towards better navigation systems, including the availability of accurate timepieces to allow for the accurate calculation of longitude for ships on extended voyages.

Even today, with all our GPS technology, navigation around the islands has to be taken very seriously. The tidal range covers boat-breaking rocks with seemingly tranquil waters, while currents surge around the islands making it very easy for a boat to be swept sideways into danger.

We decided on a challenging little passage from Bryher, around the top of neighbouring Tresco and down through Old Grimsby Sound.

The green areas dry at low tide so we crossed on a rising tide with about a metre of water under our keel

A chicane to avoid the Cones

Most people these days rely on chart plotters and digital charts but we carry detailed paper charts for the islands and they carry the following warning, so it's vital to look through the clear water to confirm the position of any charted dangers:

Sadly for a Swedish couple, this warning was unheeded. Once we'd arrived safely in St Mary's we saw the Lifeboat bringing their sinking 40ft yacht into the harbour, with emergency pumps running to keep her afloat.

The official report suggested that they'd struck an isolated rock off the north coast of St Martin's and had damaged their propeller saildrive, causing a significant ingress of water. The lifeboat coxswain had to carry out a risk assessment as they arrived on scene; the RNLI's primary concern is to save lives at sea so they evacuated the yacht's crew and put two of the lifeboat's crew onto the deck, with a petrol-powered salvage pump. For a while they weren't sure that the pump would keep up with the in-flooding but they were clearly keen not to have the yacht founder (with risks of pollution and navigation dangers to other water users) so were relieved to keep the yacht afloat. The fire brigade added their emergency pump as soon as the yacht came alongside in St Mary's and the Lifeboat carefully put the casualty vessel alongside the old quay to dry out at low tide.

The poor Swedish crew now face a huge set of challenges, starting with emergency hull repairs to keep the water out as the high tide refloated the boat. After that there would be the tasks of finding a permanent fix to the hull, plus the unenviable job of cleaning and drying the boat out. After such a catastrophic event, damage to engine, electrics, batteries and woodwork would all need professional assessment and repair. No wonder they looked profoundly shocked  - we offered to get them a tea and the skipper was still in disbelief - "We were in 20m of water, had just checked the chart and then there was a terrible bang", he said. 

New Zealand calling

One of the unexpected benefits of our remote anchorage in Great Porth on Bryher was that there was absolutely no mobile signal to be had, without rowing ashore and climbing a small hill. It reminded us of cruising in the Pacific Islands. Out there, of course, we had our satellite phone to pick up plain text emails and weather faxes - no photos or attachments allowed, our month data allowance was only 5MB (yes megabytes, about the size of a single photo!) - so our SSB radio was a great link to the voices of fellow sailors and shore-based weather forecasters.

Out of curiosity, on Thursday evening Graham switched on the SSB, spun the tuning dials and was amazed to get a remarkably clear (for shortwave, that is) news programme from New Zealand. The RNZ news is broadcast from an aerial in Wellington, primarily for consumption in the Pacific region, so the signal was bouncing off the ionosphere from half way around the world (about 11,900 miles) to reach us.

Nice to know that the old-school technology still works!

 

Exploring Bryher

 

Bryher is the most westerly populated island and is beautiful. The extended spell of warm, windless conditions allowed us time to explore though we were surprised when a dense fog bank rolled in on Friday. Not quite as surprised, it must be said, as the yacht which was on its way out to sea as the fog arrived - they very sensibly returned to the anchorage!

Elderly tractor and classic yacht in the New Grimsby Sound anchorage

The island is home to some very keen gardeners, taking advantage of the mild climate, and some impressive entrepreneurial skills; honesty stalls (many with credit card readers!) sell anything from artwork, to island-made fudge and Scilly Chilli (a Covid-era diversification from one of the small farms here).

 The sole church has wonderful stained glass windows and gravestones that are a habitat for a range of fluffy lichens that wouldn't thrive in a normally polluted airstream.

The laid-back Bryher vibe was to be jolted somewhat by the arrival of the annual Scilly 60 at the weekend. This is an ultra-marathon event which sees runners tackle wild courses on five islands, presumably using the enforced ferry time in between each as welcome recovery sessions. On Friday we saw about 100 runners do the warm-up Scilly 40 event, crossing the rocks above our anchorage.

We were sorry to leave the island but, with the return to westerly winds in the forecast, it was time to do a little rock-dodging navigation back to St Mary's.....

Easterly winds and avoiding Stinking Porth

The wind has gone round to the east, so we’ve taken advantage of it to move to a very rocky, shallow anchorage called Great Porth on the west side of Bryher. 

Not to be confused with the neighbouring, rock-strewn bay called Stinking Porth!

 This area would be untenable in the usual SW winds but we are anchored very comfortably in about 5m of crystal-clear water. The seabed is covered with tall strands of kelp and other weed but, with the help of polarised sunglasses, we were able to hunt out a patch of clear sand and drop the anchor neatly into the middle of it to give us confidence that it would hold fast in the forecast 16 knots of easterly wind today.

We’ll be on Scilly for a few more days so some more photos and stories to follow.

Sailing at Last!

This has been a slow start to the season, sailing wise, so the Maunie blog has been rather dormant up until now. However, Graham has been active with publications of a different and more professional nature, with an article published in Practical Boat Owner.

Our video of the 2024 cruise to Guernsey and Brittany also won the ‘osCA’ prize in the annual Cruising Association log awards, so we attended the awards ceremony in London and the latest copy of the association’s magazine, Cruising, features the story of the video.

The early summer has seen some house-based projects to keep us away from the boat but at last we’re back on Maunie, though the sailing season began with a much needed clean of Maunie’s very weedy bottom.

There's a short timelapse of the process here

We finally headed west from Dartmouth last Friday, first to the River Yealm for a night where the warning image of heavy rain on the radar turned into an absolute deluge as we arrived. Enough to confirm that our waterproof sailing jackets, bought in New Zealand about 12 years ago, aren’t quite as waterproof as we hoped!

Bright yellow echo from the rain squalls

We then sailed on to Fowey and enjoyed the sight of the Saturday club racing of local one-design keelboats called Troys.

The rather rolly mooring in the lower estuary didn’t promise a good night’s sleep so we moved upriver to one of three visitor moorings which deliver very different views, depending on whether you look upstream or downstream.

Upstream, all very beautiful....

Downstream, not so much. The clay loading wharf

From Fowey we motorsailed in a slowly dying breeze to an evening anchorage near Cadgwith, on the SE tip of the Lizard Peninsula to give us a perfect midnight start with favourable tide for the 6-hour passage to Scilly. Unfortunately, we had to motor the whole way, but we decided that it’d be worth the effort given a forecast of settled stunning weather for the week ahead. Anyway, Graham enjoyed plotting all the ships on the radar during his watch - it’s a busy shipping area for vessels leaving the English Channel and heading up into the Irish Sea. Di’s watch saw first light as we approached the islands – always a treat!

Scilly is just beautiful but previous visits have always involved watching the forecast as it’s not a comfortable place to be in strong winds. We’re also usually on a mission to move on to the next location so the islands have always been a one or two day stop-over; indeed, this time we were planning to sail on to SW Ireland.

With a few days of really settled weather ahead (and a not so certain long-term forecast for next week), we’ve changed our plans and have decided to spend some quality time here in Scilly. So far, we’re not regretting the decision at all; it’s just a beautiful place.

The view from our  Porth Cressa anchorage, St Mary's

The main harbour with the RMS Scillonian (the daily supply ship) on the left

Locals bartering potatoes for fish

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Maunie cruise without some boat maintenance in exotic places, so Graham set about solving a small but niggling water leak that only happened when the boat was heeled over and punching into big waves. Removing the teak capping rail (a 2-hour process) revealed a fissure in the filler between the hull and deck mouldings that would allow water to creep in to the boat. 

With the gaps fully sealed, the teak was replaced onto a bed of butyl sealant, so we are very hopeful that we’ve fixed the issue. Di, meanwhile, did sterling work sorting out the slightly chaotic storage of gear below decks. When we were on the long voyage, we were very strict about everything having its place (we had to be, otherwise we’d never find things when we needed them) but that discipline had taken a bit of a slide recently. It feels good to have everything back in order!