And So We Wait….

It’s June on Monday. Apparently. I have tried explaining this to my fingers, feet and most other parts of my body. However even ensconced in fleeces, puffer jackets, socks,boots,gloves, and hats they are freezing.

So it’s Saturday afternoon and I am sat in the cockpit looking out at Slate Grey Falmouth, with a sky that is about to spend the next three days doing something Biblical.

Anyway, whining aside. This morning we left Plymouth for Falmouth.

Plymouth was a nice enough place to visit. Oh to damn with faint praise! Typical of many european cities that had been carpet bombed during the war and rebuilt in the 1960’s. The historic part that remained was charming and we spent a couple of happy afternoons eating and drinking in the sun.
However, the weatherman was becoming more somber by the day as he discussed the impending weather. Storms tomorrow, through next week and so on. We only had our berth until this morning as it belonged to a charter boat and it was due to return today.
So at 5am we rose, made coffee and motored out through the breakwater into a Southwesterly chop.
Now sailing is awesome. Don’t get me wrong. I love it, I love the adventure, the freedom and being on or near water. However there are certain times,when I would rather be doing something else. This morning was definitely one of those days.
It was freezing, really cold. The wind was 20kts on the nose and the previously mentioned chop was bucking the boat about. I think that the proper term for chop is “swell period”. Either way, the swell period was 5 seconds, which meant that every 5 seconds a wave came along and made the boat buck. When its on the nose it is uncomfortable. When its freezing cold and on the nose it is miserable.
So by 6.30am, we are both huddled under the spray hood feeling spewy and sipping ginger tea. “Never mind” we reassured ourselves, “it’s only for 6 hours!”. Jaysus! Anyway,we bore away a bit to try and get some wind in the sails and calm the boats motion. So thats what we did, beat 40 miles in the cold.
I did however manage to break up the journey by running up and testing the water maker to make sure it was still working after nine months asleep.
Anyway, we arrived at Falmouth yacht haven, and moored up with a little help from some nice people on the pontoons.Our yacht has a fat arse, and we have to shoehorn her into most berths. The first we found wouldn’t fit at all, so we patiently waited while a speedboat vacated the only other free berth and motored and hauled Ruby into place. A couple of quick thankyou’s to our new friends and we slumped below in the warm, broke out the emergency tortellini , inhaled them and slept. I don’t ever remember falling asleep.

Falmouth is a beautiful city. The Yacht haven is strange though . It is quite small and poorly equipped, yet the yachts here are serious pieces of kit. As Falmouth is the jump point for travel South, many blue water cruisers wait here for a weather window. There are many foreign ensigns on the yachts from the USA and further afield.

We have at least a week here , while we wait for our crew. The long term weather forecast is ummming and ahhing about the weather forecast for our due jump date about the 7th of June. We may be stuck here for a while longer we wait for three days of settled weather in Biscay. However as my friend Neil says ” nothing you can do about the weather”. So its going to be fleeces and gloves for a while longer. Because even the cold, cold ,wet weather is preferable to getting a kicking crossing the Bay of Biscay.