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!

First sail of 2025 - Sunshine at Last

We've been going down to Maunie regularly over the winter, but mostly to check that she's OK after a succession of gales, named storms and generally poor weather, so it was a welcome change to have some cold, sunny and reasonably breezy conditions this week.

So we had a lovely shake-down sail in Start Bay on Tuesday; it was great to shake the cobwebs off and remind ourselves of how to do it. The boat performed perfectly and, even though we were the only yacht on the water, the sunshine saw a lot of people visiting their moored boats to start waking them up from winter hibernation.

This is a short video to give you an idea of the day - click here to view it.

We hope it's the beginning of a good sailing season! 

A sunny October weekend on the Yealm

Just back from a lovely few days - a sail west to the River Yealm (about 30 nautical miles) in rather rolly conditions where we were the only yacht on the water, according to the watch keepers in the National Coast Watch lookout on Prawle Point. Then a day sheltering from a Force 7 southerly (a good time to service the winches) before two days of gloriously sunny weather for some long hikes along the coast path. Here are a few photos:

Saturday morning after the winds had calmed

Walking out towards Wembury Point

Surfers in Wembury Bay

Looking back towards Wembury Bay and the entrance to the Yealm

The Yealm

Yealm Pool

Good conditions for a trip up the mast

Sunday morning started with some dense fog but it burned off in the morning sunshine for some more great coast walking.

Yealm entrance

view from the Ship Inn 

The passage back to Dartmouth on Monday was entertainingly windy, though with a confused sea and lots of rain. A RNLI lifeboat - on a delivery trip we think - came to have a look at us before bashing through the waves towards Falmouth.

Overall a super week aboard with only one hiccup - our hitherto completely reliable electric outboard has stopped working. We managed to test it at a local ePropulsion agent and confirmed that the battery is fine so the fault is somewhere in the outboard leg so it'll have to go back to the service centre in Southampton for investigation.

Taking back control

The return voyage from France confirmed what we'd been suspecting for a little while - Maunie's steering was becoming increasingly stiff. Safely back on the mooring, we disconnected the Whitlock Mamba wheel system from the rudder which confirmed that the Whitlock system was turning freely but the rudder was seizing up. Nothing for it but an unplanned trip up the Rive Dart to have the boat hauled out at Baltic Wharf.

Graham had worked out the process of disconnecting and releasing the rudder but was, understandably, a tad apprehensive so he enlisted the help of Dave Sharp and the team at Baltic Wharf to assist in removing the heavy rudder and diagnosing the problem. 

With the bottom bearing removed we had to rotate the rudder back and forth to get it to slide out

With a 70mm diameter solid stainless steel shaft, the rudder needed 2 strong people to lift it

With the rudder removed we found the first probable cause of the stiffness. The lower lip seal (designed to prevent water getting int the main bearing) had collapsed and the stainless steel tensioning spring had broken - we think it was coiling up as the rudder turned, impeding the movement.

The next issue was slightly perplexing. Inside the hull is a heavily reinforced rudder tube with a hard polymer plain bearing inside it. At the side of the rudder tube is a grease line which feeds waterproof grease from a manually operated greaser to the stainless shaft.

Well, that's the theory. What we found was that there was no hole drilled through the inner (cream coloured) bearing to allow the grease to reach the shaft - we now understand why we never had to refill the greaser and could only ever get an eighth of a turn on its handle. 

We've now drilled a hole through and were lucky to be able to read the part number on the lip seal and get a pair of replacements (there's one at the top of the bearing as well).

All the components of the rudder system, checked and dry fitted before reinstalling

With the help of Dave and a hydraulic jack, Graham was able to refit the rudder and reconnect everything. We relaunched on Wednesday and are delighted that Maunie's steering is now one-finger light. We're very happy to have solved that problem!

We're now hoping for some decent autumn weather to go sailing again.