Chill smooth sailing, with no destination. What a dream.
We set off at 6am from St Michael’s Mount harbour to catch the best of the wind and swell. We rounded the Lizard by sail at 10am, then by that time we were heading down wind, motor sailing most of the rest of the way. Dolphins greeted us as we entered Helford River, a welcome sight after 12 hours of sailing! Nauta looks very happy in her beautiful new Summer mooring.
Moving Nauta from Hayle to Helford River Day 1: - Pete captained the vessel, Jim & Jordan crew - Jordan got her first bout of sea sickness and was lethargic most of the sail - Jim also got sick but kept it together enough (poor Pete! 🤣) - We made it through Long Ship’s Passage at Land’s End. Pretty hairy with the swell and wind chop, but happy we did it rather than going around. - Stopped at the incredible St Micheal’s Mount harbour for the night. What a spot!
We set off a little later to allow time for a shower for me and new lines for the boys. Very very little wind all day, so decided to motor sail all of the way. A calm easy day until we were trying to find a place to stop for the night in the Looe area. We tested two anchor points, on the first we hit rocks and the second was very swelly. The last choice was the harbour. A very small and narrow entrance and the tide was dropping quickly. We hit 0.1m on the way in almost beaching ourselves in the middle of the entrance to the harbour. Instead we beached just next to the visitors section of the harbour wall- could have been worse, but not ideal and a little embarrassing 🙈 We tied off in preparation for the rising tide and after some calculations realised we had a couple of hours until we were afloat again. We tendered to Looe to get a pizza dinner before returning in the dark to tighten the lines and position Nauta properly. All is well, turns out it wasn’t such an easy day after all!