Position 47:29.30N 12:45.10W
It is 05.20am on the 9th of June, our oldest grandson Henry’s twelfth birthday and it is a sulphuric daylight. For three days now we have been running before the generous SW Azorean High trade wind, in fact an uneasy confluence of fast moving air above the High and beneath powerful Low moving eastwards to our north. Naturally where the winds of a high and those of a low meet and run together there is a mixing of temperatures, resulting in…FOG.
In the fog the only evidence we have of the ships that are passing in both directions infront of and behind us day and night are the pale blue shapes creeping across the chart plotter screen revealing themselves by name through the AIS data. They are becoming more numerous as we move towards The Channel and last night we had one fast moving vessel travelling at 24-27 knots due to pass less than two miles ahead of us, by calculation or coincidence we were not sure. Classified as a pleasure craft, the name Argo MOD70 would suggest otherwise but what had me foxed were her dimensions, 79 ft length and 79 ft beam and no entry for her draught. Was she a catamaran? Or was the 79 ft a measurement of diameter and we were dealing with a UFO using close proximity to the water surface for her passage-making and not passing through it (!). Another for the Google when arrive in Falmouth list.
I have just been into the cockpit where everything is saturated and dripping; it is as if we are travelling along in a tunnel of 50 metres visibility both sides of Zoonie. I locked the winch handle into the top of the winch around which the mainsheet was coiled. After a while these essential lines stretch through the pull of the wind in the sail, and when they stretch they are free to move a little resulting in a pitiful creaking noise, resonant throughout Zoonie and unique so we soon realise who is the culprit. A couple of turns and all is quiet again. I also did the genoa sheet on the way back for good measure, ‘what’s good for the goose is good for the gander’.
The wind is a constant 15-22 knots so too much for the Diva who sits waiting in her yellow dressing room bag on the foredeck. The sea state is benign, carrying us along with only the occasional roll. No more jellyfish but we did see one whale spout in the distance yesterday when the fog lifted for a few hours. Also a Wilson’s Petrel came to say ‘hello’ and Rob identified a solitary Laughing Gull from our avian treasure book ‘Seabirds of the World’. Hopefully this wind will continue for Zoonie but there is a big Low passing above us and this will either bat us into the Channel on Saturday or bend left and side swipe the west coast of Ireland. We shall see.
We had a companion for a while on exactly the same course as us. The 49 foot Maaike-Saadet, an aluminium yacht that was anchored near us in the mooring field in Horta had crept slowly up behind us. She is also bound for Falmouth. For just a few delicious hours we crept past her because the Diva was giving us an extra two knots of speed, but since then of course, since returning to our white sails, they have overtaken us again.
For a number of nights now the lack of any visible stars because of the fog has been more than made up for with the fabulous luminescence such as we have not seen for a long time. Reaching as far from Zoonie as the limited visibility would allow ragged and random patches of sea appear to be lit to a brilliant white by underwater lighting, not just the sparkles in Zoonie’s wash but whole big areas well away from her hull and both exciting and beautiful in their effect on us.
Yesterday afternoon we decided to try a game of Scrabble, but how to stop the letters slipping off the board as Zoonie rolled? Easy, a non-slip mat laid on top of the board. We can still see the extra score squares through the holes in the mat. That’s got to be worth a tenner on the ‘sailors’ initiative’ page of Practical Boat Owner hasn’t it? ‘Tested on the Azores High Swell’.
The psychology of this passage is interesting. We are on count down to a land life again after 6 years and two days, if we arrive on Saturday. There is no long passage next to look forward to. Trans-ocean sailing for us is now down to three more days after the four hundred and sixteen we have had. I will miss it and the fabulous way of life it encapsulates but then we are not selling Zoonie and we have enjoyed tentatively forming future plans for cruising around the UK next summer. However, I can well understand the folk who go round again and the few who just keep going around, one British chap in St Helena in his green steel boat was on his 17th circumnavigation. Think I’d be a bit bored by then.
But worry not, if indeed you were at all worried, I would certainly do it again if I was much younger but now it’s time for home and grandchildren!
In our Tunnel of Fog
We could barely see twenty metres from Zoonie as we continued along our private little tunnel of fog. Thank goodness for the chartplotter for a visual on nearby and approaching ships. I called up the 958ft Maersk Idaho at twelve miles distant since she was going to pass us by a matter of metres, too close for my comfort. She altered course five miles away from us and left just over a mile between us, engines thumping and foghorn blaring as she sped onward towards Panama, totally invisible from the cockpit, lost in the fog.
Remember the seventy-nine foot by seventy nine foot fast moving vessel with no draft moving at 24-27 knots to pass just ahead of us? Well, I looked her up and she turns out to be a racing trimaran recording no draft because she was speeding along on her foils, legs and feet on the bottom of her hulls. I’d liked to have seen her!
We had put away the Diva by this time as we needed to slow Zoonie down in readiness for a day time arrival off Falmouth. It seemed surreal that after all this time and travel we were using English place names again and one of my favourites as well. I nearly settled in Falmouth many years ago after parting company with hubby number two and the prospect of keeping Zoonie there for around a year as our ‘Westcountry floating cottage by the Penryn River’ was very appealing.
On the ninth day of our short voyage from Horta we were closing the Continental Shelf and the 1000metre contour line and within less than three hours our depth below the keel dropped to 500metres and then 200metres, positively shallow after the abyssal plains of the oceans well over six thousand metres in places. The colour of the shallow sea under the grey sky was a diesel wash as we moved the cursor of the chart plotter onto the Lizard waypoint 163 miles away.
The next day the RV Celtic Explorer ‘Destination Research’ appeared on the screen during my 5am to 8am watch and I thought what an excellent title for a book ‘Destination Explorer’. I prepared the ingredients for some flapjack, using up the butter as dairy products are not allowed into the country, or so I thought. As many as four ships were around us at any one time, cargo carriers, fishing boats, the research vessel, tankers, laden ships drifting around their anchors, awaiting the tide or a place alongside to unload, and the flying trimaran, which was interesting. By bringing up their red direction lines on the plotter screen we could instantly see if they were on a collision course with us. It was still foggy and I listened to the distant fog horns from the dripping companionway looking into the gloom around us.
By mid-morning on the last full day, day 10, the sky started to reveal its true colour in elusive patches and we sailed until 19.20 in the evening, choosing to motor from then on as the wind dropped and we needed to be able to move out of the way of ships approaching the separation lanes around Lands End. The bullish Low I mentioned in a previous blog did what we hoped it would do and turned up the western Irish coast leaving us calm conditions for our final approach in the early morning of the 12th June. I was concerned about motoring because of the numerous lobster pots to be found around the rocky Cornish south west coast, but Zoonie’s timing was impeccable and we started spotting them in the clear light of day and did a gentle slalom down the line in the company of a few other local yachts and the Warship Northumberland. She was out patrolling and asking skippers about their destinations as part of the security measures surrounding the G7 summit underway at Carbis Bay with lots of ‘knock on’ activities in Falmouth over our arrival weekend.
While still a few miles from our landfall we called up The National Yacht line to obtain Customs Clearance, answered a few questions and were told we could take down our yellow flag and proceed into port. The other part of that process was to complete a C1331 form and as soon as we could enter our exact date and time of arrival, we could send it off to the office in Dover by snail mail. Covid wise we would take a Covid test ourselves using the test kit we bought on line and had sent to the boatyard and send it off.
The fog cleared entirely and my heart swelled as the low-lying Lizard peninsula came into view. From then on it was pot watching that added another dimension to our approach. The strongly ebbing tide would sometimes pull the red buoys under water so they were hard to see but the fact they were laid in lines helped us to predict where they might be.
Rob called Mark, the Harbour Master at Pendennis Marina, and he gave us directions to enter the inner yacht village through a little swing bridge right beside the Maritime Museum. Rob manoeuvred Zoonie beautifully around a yacht and into a tight berth where smiling Mark took our lines and helped us along the final few metres of our circumnavigation; a perfect low-key return amidst the hubbub of the onshore activities, more about that later. I had to tell Mark about the new five-pound note that floated past us in the water just before were passed through the swing bridge, not being in a position to pick it up was so frustrating, but I was pleased for the person who could retrieve it.
Zoonie has brought us safely and comfortably through our circumnavigation which has taken six years and two days, covering 38,252 miles, that is 420 days at sea. What an adventure. I would recommend it to anyone who loves sailing and learning by first hand encounters, how other cultures work and how their history has shaped their present day lives. The natural world has been a constant source of wonder and surprise. Despite the damage the natural world has to endure from man and the elements, including fire, water, wind and seismic activity, its ability to bounce back and recover is awe-inspiring. It is, and I believe will continue to be a beautiful world, well worth your exploration.
Protests, Parades and Pints of English Beer
It was a busy, colourful and typically welcoming Falmouth we returned to just two weeks ago today, 26th June, with the G7 summit being held at Carbis Bay on the other side of the Lands End Peninsula and by happy coincidence the banner wielding visitors from home and abroad enlivened the streets while many gorgeous small (as opposed to square riggers) traditionally rigged yachts graced the expansive waters of the Fal Estuary, evocatively named Carrick Roads. Sadly, we missed the parade of sail by a whisker, but you get the jist from the photo of the odd tan-sailed beauty and the cluster of like-minded sailors in their boats moored together, their ‘overall flags’ fluttering in the perfect sailing breeze.
Dutifully we dedicated our first two hours ‘at home’ stripping Zoonie’s genoa and mainsail off (the mainsail seams had started opening again, and the genoa had a chafe hole where the Diva’s sheet had rubbed during her rendition of ‘Air on a slightly tight G String’) ready for the sailmaker/repairer, moving all the gear off the aft berth back into the fo’c’sle so we would have our double bed back in use, and completing other little chores, including doing more Covid Tests as required by current rules, which is an excellent way to prepare one’s thirst for a pint of the local brew.
Buzzzzzzzz, a drone was hovering over Zoonie’s masthead, admiring the beauty of her lines, the elegance of her sheer and the cut of her jib, oh no that was in the bag wasn’t it, and I guess the drone was checking to see if we two ancient mariners resembled terrorists. Apparently we didn’t, so we wandered along bright and stony hard paths, so different to the liquid beauty of the ocean, and had a chat with a nice lifeboatman who had some time to waste. He told us the nickname for the moored alongside cruise liner which had become home to 1000 young police officers from all over the country on duty here in beautiful Cornwall for the Summit; M/V Chlamydia!
The tubby red postbox gobbled up the Covid tests outside the corner shop, which itself proved an excellent source of basic foodstuffs. We needed passes to get through the Museum, shops and restaurant area of Pendennis so, instead, we walked the longer quieter way to the road that, in the opposite direction, leads up to Pendennis Castle.
Within minutes of our wandering in the general direction of The Chain Locker Pub we were amongst the melee of very relaxed and sociable protesters adding an international flavour to the streets of Falmouth, quite in keeping with the history of this attractive town as a welcome place for mariners from the world over through the passing centuries. Clusters of visiting police folk were armed only with smiles and one revealed his regular inland origin when Rob asked, “Where’s the nearest chandlery?” and he replied “What’s that?!”
The blend of old and new architecture, and the keeping of stone harbour walls and the steps worn down in the centre from thousands of bare and booted feet is not only a daily window on history but also suggests a council which understands the on-going value, durability and versatility of buildings set in place hundreds of years ago. Far from being ‘old fashioned’ this place is right up to date technologically without the loss of the ‘olde world character’. Love it.
I wondered what the visitors thought about our Westcountry town, bathed in overall sunlight and very much ‘open for business’ as usual and despite Covid.
I mentioned, many tides ago, looking forward to a pint of Doombar Beer at the Chain Locker, being thwarted the last time we returned from the Azores, when it was ‘Orf’, well my dream fizzled out completely this time when we were told “We don’t do Doombar” so, thinking I was doomed to disappointment, I settled on a pint of Mena Dhu brewed for the last 170 years at a nice, smelly factory in St Austell founded by a local named Walter Hicks. My hat off to his memory, it was delicious.
Fortified, we wandered in towards Falmouth Town Centre along the narrow ancient street and found ourselves contra-flow to the peaceful protesters with their various causes; Genocide in Ethiopia, the anatomically accurate White Elephant of HS2, if only, Nature’s green clad supporters, promoters of a Myanmar National Unity Government with a released Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at its head to name just four. I hoped they were satisfied with their efforts: one thing about the UK that is a credit to it is that we have such freedom of _expression_, generally speaking without the fear of being tazored or shot. Maybe I am being naïve but I didn’t sense the protestors had been infiltrated by extremist or fundamentalist groups, they were small groups and had put much careful thought and preparation into their banners, costumes and effigies.
Our first busy day home had started with the low-lying Lizard ahead of us and just a few miles to go. A Warship passing and a handful of fellow sailors out on the briny and soon we were chatting to the locals, mingling with mindful visitors, supping lovely ale and finally, back on our lovely Zoonie, the Red Arrows flew overhead to acknowledge our return, how very thoughtful of them!
A Walk to Penryn
Rob had the good idea to take a walk from Zoonie at her mooring in the Pendennis Yacht Village, to Freemans Boatyard near the road bridge and up the Penryn River. beyond where the water runs out for the last three hours of the ebbing tide and returns during the flood, to get an idea of where Zoonie was going to be moored.
The time of year, with trees and shrubs in full leaf and many flowering plants in bloom and all bathed in sunlight, certainly showed the town at its best. I love the way a gentle walking pace enables a thorough peek into gardens, gateways and shop porches and windows. You can see how the tide runs clear of the mud up the Penryn River. From the ocean depths to a metre high mud bank for Zoonie to negotiate the next morning.
Walking back along the narrow road that runs parallel to the river there are many coffee shops and we chose one that did iced coffees and sat watching folk passing by, voyeurs returned home.
Later, at precisely 5.00pm, time for Sundowners, in our petite marina the snapping of the ring pull on our beer cans echoed all around the houses as owners prepared to go home from their day aboard and we were left alone, the only live-aboards present.
The Pendennis Dock area, including the Yacht Village, was revamped a few years ago by entrepreneur Peter de Savery, who helped put Falmouth and Lands End firmly on the map of modern commercial intent. I met him 35 years ago to ask him if one of his boatmen, in a hefty work boat, could venture out of the estuary and tow in a friend of mine who had been trying to sail the world when, while anchored in the Falklands in the South Atlantic during a storm, his junk rig steel schooner had both its masts sawn clean through by the steel hawser on a barge that had been cast adrift. It was a bit of a publicity gimmick arranged by a newspaper, since Bob’s arduous 3mph crawl up the Atlantic under jury rig aboard ‘Glory’ was nearly at an end anyway. But maybe it got him the publicity he needed to sell his story and fund the repairs, I don’t know because we lost touch soon after.
We spent a relaxing evening aboard, ready now for the novel short journey the next morning to Zoonie’s new berth, having had a good look at where she might be moored just off the harbour wall at the boatyard in historic Penryn.
From Marina Chic to a Mud Berth
Zoonie started her transition just before High Water on the 14th of June under sunny skies and in the path of the eels that we saw thriving in their little shoal in the marina.
You may remember the book I read recently, ‘The Gospel of the Eels’ by Patrik Svensson in which he discusses why eels are now critically endangered, all the causes for their rapid demise being rooted in man’s activities, including pollution, but also physical impediments to their pathways upriver to their spawning grounds, like sluices and locks. Well Rob and I were thrilled to see them in their juvenile ‘glass’ form growing in the safety of the marina waters, just as young fish find sanctuary amidst the still and silent hulls, the weedier the better for their food supply. Wriggling signs of hope within the modern yachting scene.
Mark operated the swing bridge and waved as we passed through and negotiated the marina through to Falmouth harbour. Red and green buoys and little craft on their fore and aft moorings marked our route and just a few minutes later, on this shortest of short passages for Zoonie, we scanned along the harbour wall to find the shed and yard we had explored the day before.
I chatted with Portuguese Manuel on the phone on our approach, both he and owner George and Cathie, with whom I had corresponded since and while we were in Cape Town about the mooring, were on hand to take lines as the route to our berth was quite tight. Manuel in his rich, soft accent,
“You pass the first yard and continue towards the bridge. On your left you will see a gap in the pontoons between two yachts, Unity and Chloe May. Turn towards the harbour wall between them, you will see us ready for you and your berth is around the pontoon to the right.”
There were Cathie and Manuel standing on the harbour wall as Rob very slowly edged Zoonie directly towards the ancient stones. I rarely use the word ‘very’ in my writing but here it is entirely appropriate. Zoonie crept with the stealth of a hunting big cat so that her turning the right-angled corner to the right around a beautiful, recently built traditional style yacht, was under perfect control and showed just how manoeuvrable she is at very slow speed. Well done my man.
I sent bow and stern lines up to our smiling handlers and another one to George who was waiting on the pontoon beside which Zoonie is now secured. Her berth is parallel to the wall but a couple of metres from it, alongside the pontoon that also runs parallel to the wall with alongside berths on the inside and finger berths on the outside. The photos probably explain it better. When we came to leave a few days later Cathie and Manuel took additional fore and aft lines and Rob and I eased the lines on her pontoon side as Cathie and Manuel pulled her sideways to the harbour wall and then took our baggage directly from us in the cockpit, simples.
Warm greetings were exchanged and a few hours later, to make sure Zoonie settled happily into the fourteen-foot depth of mud of which she only needed six, we went to the office to complete the formalities.
The old village of Penryn was on our doorstep and soon we were exploring its ancient streets and buildings. The town became a borough and was awarded a charter in the 13th century and undoubtedly there was a habitation here before that, possibly for a thousand years or more as the area is strategically placed for access to the English Channel and the world beyond and of course for fishing, and latterly the export of tin and granite. It may engage in similar trade again with lithium, essential apparently in the manufacture of batteries, which has been discovered in the old mines.
In one of the parks, we came across the granite standing stone you see in the photo, which reminded me of the ancient henges dotted around the world, and Claire Fraser of ‘Outlander’ fame passing through the time portal from present to past and back, but it didn’t work for me because I didn’t have a semi-precious stone on me! I wonder where I might have gone to, Tudor, Elizabethan, Viking hmmmm.
As you probably know, exploring creates an immense thirst so we popped into what rapidly became our favourite local, ‘The Famous Barrel’, with its wonderful door made from half of a six-foot-high barrel. I have yet to discover why it is ‘Famous’. Therein we supped our long-awaited local beer, Doombar and were equally refreshed by the fact they don’t choose to boost their profits with food sales, a habit that has turned so many decent old pubs into crowded restaurants. Soon we were chatting with the bar staff and a handful of locals that relaxed together in this informal atmosphere, one that is stripped away when groups huddle around a table focussing inwards on their meal and close company. Not a criticism more an observation of something valuable that has been largely lost in the commercial world we live in.
The buildings of Penryn tell its story just as well as words. Once the more fashionable of the two, when Falmouth was focussed on fishing and trade, the aristocratic Georgians built beautiful homes with their typically tall windows amidst the old stone cottages in Penryn and most are still there, now converted into apartments while keeping the attractive outer shell, they are destined to survive for another century at least. Planning permission for modern apartments require they blend in while being totally modern inside.
Many folks prefer Penryn now, as Falmouth has become a tourist hot spot and cruise liner dock with all the demands and pressures that places on a location, but between the two, being so close together, and with the presence of the university bringing plenty of young people into the area, one gets the feeling of a strong community, destined to survive and flourish. There is an exciting buzz in this area, so far away from London and the rest of Great Britain.
Well now that we are back home safe and sound from our world sail here are a few stats. We took 420 days sailing over 38,252 miles and six years two days to get around our lovely world, so our next circumnavigation will be slightly shorter, around Great Britain in 2022, which will involve much interesting wintertime planning and keep us old retirees out of mischief.
So, this will be my last blog for a while and I wanted to thank you dear readers for your loyalty and kind comments, it has been such a pleasure to take you with us on our travels, bless you and stay well and we’ll be with you again next year.
Lots of love and best wishes,
Barb and Rob