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!