Sun, Silence, and Still Water

A cool thing about moving around the UK (no, we still haven't left it yet) is the extent to which you get a sense of an area from its local news. Instead of BBC South, we've moved on to BBC Spotlight, covering the south-west of England. There's a sweet, slightly amateur-ish vibe to its titles, and the presenters rather give the impression of believing their audience to be a dozen or so people clustered around a TV in a local pub, several of whom are direct family members.

Devon and Cornwall aren't so very remote, but it does seem as though a lot less happens here. One of BBC Spotlight's recent features involved a reporter going to visit a charity shop that had an unusually good selection of designer clothing in stock. As I write, they're doing a feature on hedges. It's quiet, sleepy stuff.


Admittedly, our first stop after Weymouth was rather less quiet and sleepy. We had anchored overnight in Portland habour, just south of Weymouth, and had a very disturbed night thanks to a dolphin deciding to play with our anchor chain - seriously. We were woken by a series of very strange noises - splashing and the grinding of the anchor chain moving about - and something rubbing against the hull. The only explanation I could imagine was that someone was trying to come aboard (not generally a positive thing in the middle of the night), so it was with some trepidation that Peter went out to investigate and was amazed to see a dolphin flip itself out of the water by the bows. At the time, it seemed rather worth the sleep loss.

Less so the next morning. We had an early morning start to get across Lyme Bay to Torquay, and we were both a little dopey and grumpy, but for once the wind treated us kindly. We tried out our spinnaker for the first time, and while it doesn't exactly match Excessive Penguin's colour scheme, it works pretty well for a sail that had been sitting in a damp locker for a good ten years.

We arrived in Torquay feeling rather pleased with ourselves, but were less pleased to discover there was powerboat racing event that weekend, which included jet ski displays right beside where we were berthed. Twenty or so high-powered phallic vessels careered around the bay for two days in a row, and while the little town climbing steeply up the hills rising from the sea was not unattractive, we left earlier than we'd planned to get out of their way.

Our next stop was the River Dart, a short, somewhat bumpy journey away, which we were forced to make under motor thanks to the wind being right on our nose. As soon as we turned into the river, though, the water became flat, and we were able to enjoy the stunning scenery. We went some distance upriver, with wooded hills and extremely expensive-looking houses either side of us, until we reached the little village of Dittisham, where we hoped to take a mooring buoy. Few of their buoys, however, could handle a boat of our size, and all of them were taken, so the harbour master suggested we anchor a little further upriver and come back later in the day, when fewer boats should be around.

Well, once we'd anchored we had no desire to move at all. Having gone round a bend in the river, suddenly there was nothing in sight but rolling countryside and a few other boats, and nothing to hear but birdsong. We'd have liked to stay longer, but the weather forecast dictated that if we wanted to get anywhere in the next week it had to be the following day. So, slightly forlornly, we pulled up our anchor (taking a giant block of river mud with it) and motored gently back downriver. The harbour master stopped us partway down the river, and we groaned internally, thinking we were about to be charged the nightly anchoring fee - but instead he gave us a Dartmouth Harbour brochure, a quick warning that a naval ship was about to start manoeuvring up ahead, and the night on him. Even with the anchoring charge (which always strikes us as an outrageous concept), it would be well worth going back.

We knew we weren't likely to sail, with zero wind predicted, but we needed to get to Salcombe before the southerlies kicked in the next day, so it was another journey by motor. The sea was flat, though, and the sun came out every so often, making for a pleasant sort of journey. Salcombe turned out to be almost as lovely as Dartmouth, although the only available anchorage was crowded with boats out for the day. I have to confess that I failed to get any pictures of Salcombe, for reasons I'm about to describe, so I had to pinch this one from Google.

We didn't manage to evade paying to anchor that night, but when the harbour master came to ask for money, he also explained that there was a free short stay pontoon available in town, with a hose for water, free toilets and showers nearby, and a co-op a short walk away. Suddenly, the anchoring fee seemed much more reasonable, and as we were running short of provisions we decided to avail ourselves of this opportunity that evening. Salcombe itself turned out to be as delightful as could be imagined, with twisty little streets just wide enough for one car to get through, and almost no chain stores. We loaded ourselves up at the co-op, and were feeling very chipper about everything when we got back to the boat.

Inevitably, something was going to spoil our good mood. So it was more with resignation than surprise that we greeted our starboard engine's failure to start. Peter did everything he could think of, but the starter motor was resolutely non-functioning. We couldn't stay where we were - we'd already exceeded the half hour limit with all the messing about - so we were obliged to leave and re-anchor under one engine (not the easiest of tasks, although fortunately it was an easy berth to get out of) and head for Plymouth the next day as we'd planned, where we could get the starter motor fixed.

It wasn't ideal, and to make matters worse I woke up the next morning with a bug, which caused me to discharge my breakfast before we'd even gone out to sea. Just perfect before a long sail, with complicated manoeuvring to come at the end of it. The wind was with us, but too light to sail at any significant speed, the sun was hidden behind clouds, and it was cold. I shivered my way through the long, slow sail, not wanting to take refuge inside for fear it'd upset my stomach, and we both entertained a lot of 'Isn't this supposed to be fun?' and 'I'm not sure I like sailing very much' thoughts.

We cheered up a bit when we got to Plymouth itself, where an enormous breakwater outside the harbour guarantees flat water within. We sailed all the way up the harbour and into the river on which Plymouth sits, and felt like proper sailors when we turned on our one working engine only a few hundred yards from our destination. We were planning to visit the Multihull Centre, a marina and boatyard that specialises in multihulls (well, duh), which seemed like an obvious place to sit while we sorted out our engine. Plus, it's extraordinarily cheap for berthing. On the downside, it's a tidal marina so only accessible at high tide. We therefore had a couple of hours to kill before making our way there, which we spent anchored near the channel entrance.

We'd told the marina that we had only one engine and consequently needed an extremely easy berth to get on to, as our manoeuvring capabilities were basically nill. They promised us a large space partway along their long pontoon, so this was what we headed for once we'd reached the end of the channel. Only to find that the space we'd been promised was occupied. There was another spot we might just squeeze into, but we'd already passed it, and we were fast running out of water deep enough to navigate.

The only option was to reverse but, as we quickly discovered, reversing in a straight line under one engine wasn't really an option. Our one remaining engine pushed our rear to the right, sending us into an anti-clockwise spin. This would have been fine, except that we were also drifting towards a couple of tiny buoys in the shallow water opposite the pontoon, and I couldn't spin us quickly enough to motor forwards and into deep water. At this point I was pretty convinced we were going to end up stuck in the mud, but Peter yelled at me to power forwards and, not at all sure it was a good idea, I obeyed. We skimmed the buoys and kept moving, despite the depth gauge telling me we got down to 0.5 metres, which meant we were definitely mud surfing. We took a second pass at the empty berth and, with the help of a very kind couple who pulled us in despite the rain, got ourselves safely tied up. Finally, we could relax - we certainly weren't going anywhere until we had two working engines.

Once the weather cleared, the marina turned out to be an a terribly pretty place, with greenery all around and a delightful little village a short walk away, complete with a millpond occupied by ducklings, goslings, and a pair of nesting swans. We stayed long enough to acquire a new starter motor and have a nose around the largest collection of multihulled boats we'd ever seen in one place, before moving on to a nearby anchorage that rivals even the river Dart for beauty.

We woke in the morning morning to sun, silence, and still water. Looking at the weather, we might be here for a little while, but really that doesn't seem like too much of a hardship. For all that we were planning to be further south by this point, we're not exactly heartbroken still to be in England.

Have we inadvertantly moved to Weymouth?

I mean, as you can see from the picture above, Weymouth is by no means a bad place to be. It's just that we weren't exactly intending to stay here for the best part of two weeks. We're fast being reacquainted with an eternal truth of sailing - that the weather is a total fuckwit.

But I'm getting rather ahead of things; I've got some of catching up to do. When last I wrote, we were dripping in a marina in Portsmouth. Things cleared up beautifully the next day and, expecting perhaps a little more wind than was ideal, but nothing too troublesome, we headed off again, this time with an anchorage on the Isle of Wight by the name of Newtown Creek as our destination. The wind was, indeed, definitely brisk as we left Portsmouth harbour and tried out our mainsail for the first time. Meanwhile, the sail was not cooperating. It's a style of sail we haven't used before, and it took a good fifteen minutes of wrestling to get it up; even then, it was caught at the bottom and not at all the shape it was supposed to be.

Well, we didn't have far to go, and we really didn't have the patience to pul it down and try all over again. We stuck out the headsail instead, turned the engines off, and basked in the quiet of sailing - and at a good speed too! Even when the wind died off (the exact opposite of what it was predicted to do, naturally), we were still moving at a pretty remarkable pace. If this was what sailing a large catamaran was like, we were enthusiastically on board.





By the time we reached the entrance to the anchorage, Newtown Creek, the wind had disappeared altogether, the water was absolutely calm and the sun warm on our fifteen layers of clothing. We selected a spot with care in the narrow river and once again allowed the cats out to explore, which they did with excessive confidence, as the picture to the right shows.

Newtown Creek was a wonderful place to spend a few days. It's sheltered from all directions, incredibly beautiful (it's a National Trust nature reserve) and extremely quiet. We even got to watch seals from the back deck as they basked in the sun.

We couldn't stay for long, however, as our calorifier had started leaking. Unless we fancied living without hot water - which, in the UK in April, we definitely didn't - we needed to get somewhere a new one could be delivered. With mild regret, we headed out of Newtown Creek again a couple of days later towards Poole Harbour, which was about 30 miles down the coast.

We had, for the most part, a good sail, although the wind was annoyingly prone to wibbling about from almost dead downwind, causing our sails to require changing every ten minutes. A more significant problem came later, as we were about to enter the harbour. To the right of the entrance is a shallower patch of water - but still comfortably deep enough for us to cross, according to the chart. It seemed like a perfectly good shortcut. And yet, as we tried to cross it, the depth dropped alarmingly until there were only a couple of feet below us, our depth gauge showing we had over four metres less than the chart claimed, and the waves were getting quite lively in the shallow water. We veered south to go through the official channel, just about staying clear of the dangerous patch of water, and wondering what on earth was going on.

We realised later what had happened. Our charting software allows you to set a 'safe' depth, and water shallower than this is highlighted. Peter had told me he'd changed this from ten metres to five, figuring that a boat with a one metre draught could cope with a slightly less cautious safe depth. As it turned out, that wasn't exactly what he'd done. In fact, he had set the chart to add five metres to the depth everywhere. Oops, said he.

We stayed in Poole harbour for a few days being assaulted by high winds, including one night in a marina to pick up the new calorifier, when it seemed fairly miraculous that I managed to berth the boat successfully with the vigor of the wind. We spent the next, suddenly still, night in an extremely pretty anchorage right by (surprisingly) one of the largest oil rigs in the country (considerately disguised by trees), and woke to ethereal mist.

It was very lovely, but rather a concern, given that we were planning to sail to Weymouth that day. But the forecast promised it would lift, and as we motored slowly out of Poole harbour it seemed to be getting much brighter.

Our positivity was short-lived. We hadn't gone more than a few miles before we hit dense fog. Before long we could only see a hundred feet or so in any direction. To make matters worse, there was no wind at all, so we had no choice but to motor, and the cats had responded to the engine noise by expelling every bodily substance they could think of all in one go.

It's exhausting travelling in dense fog. We have AIS, which gives out a signal from Penguin and allows us to search for other vessels nearby, but not every boat uses AIS so we couldn't afford to relax our attention. We strained our eyes staring into the mist, hoping against hope that it would clear.

It didn't. We were crossing a point known as St Alban's Head, renowned for its turbulent waters in the best of conditions, and even in the complete absence of wind it was getting bumpy. Then, terrifyingly close, a fishing boat emerged from the fog, zooming towards us; we both swerved, but it was too close for comfort. Behind it, more fishing boats were appearing. A couple were stationery, but most of them were moving at high speed in conflicting directions, making it incredibly difficult to avoid them all. They seemed to regard it as a personal affront that we had arrived in their midst, and made no effort at all to reduce their speed as they shot by, adding to the confused waves with their wake. We had to dodge about ten of them before the stream of fishing boats abated, and we had only the bouncy waters to contend with. And, of course, the fog.

We decided swiftly that we had no desire to be out here for any longer than we had to, and pushed the engines harder. Only four hours after we had set off, we were rounding the Weymouth breakwater - quite ghostly in the mist - and motoring carefully (visibility was still pretty shit) up the harbour.

With relief, we took our berth on the town quay. It wasn't really necessary, as it turned out, but the harbour staff came out to help, one of them remarking that Penguin looked 'magnificant', which did a lot to cheer us both up.

Overlooking Portland Harbour (which just happens to be right next to Weymouth)

We were pretty sure we didn't want to have to do that again any time soon, but fortunately we knew we were staying put for a few days anyway. And then a few days more. In the end, it became more like two weeks, thanks to a combination of my work hours and Storm Hannah, but finally we've set off again. We're now in Torquay - but our journey here is a tale for a future post; this one's gone on long enough already. If we could just get some sun, everything would be grand.