Day 11 - Two Anchors!

Slow going from Port Isaac

Bude beach mooring

In flight catering provided by British Rail

Bude beach mooring

Slow going to Bude

Family beach picnic

Bob photo bombing Pole and Lindy's romantic moment

 The plan after leaving Port Isaac was to carry on up the Cornish coast and hopefully get into Devon.

A gentle breeze offshore blew us through the harbour entrance under jib alone. After that the sensible and seaman like thing to would be to luff up, drop the anchor and get the main up in a calm and organised manner.

This we did... Perfectly. "This is going well" said I to myself. With the main organised all we had to do was get ........the....... Anchor........up. nothing........to.....it.......

One hour later despite sailing back and forth over the blasted thing we had to cut the anchor free. Fortunately the warp sank so the local fishermen won't be fouling their props on it. New criteria for our next destination: somewhere we can buy a replacement anchor.

Supposedly a force 3 all the way... We reverted back to the now familiar drift, paddle, drift up the coast. Slow slow progress until a gentle f1 filled in and got going at least somewhere. 

Eventually we settled on Bude (as in 'food' apparently)  and as we got closer the wind filled in to a decent F3 which brought us in to the corner of th bay nearest to the canal entrance where we could anchor.....oh....wait!

To add insult to injury... As we pulled in to our chosen spot we were greeted with a cheery hello from our Newquay sea kayaker. This is the guy who likened sea kayaking to walking but on water. That's right... We could have got here quicker had we walked!

We pulled the boat onto the beach where we were joined by Mrs Pole and her family. Lots of cakes and lashings of beer... Lovely!

I also managed to find a shooting and fishing shop near the canal where Rob the owner admitted to having an old anchor stashed away somewhere. This was purchased at a very reasonable sum and collected later in the evening. We were now good to go again.

The forecast for the next day looked perfect for crossing the Bristol Channel so we halued the boat off so we could be afloat at the top of the tide. Hopefully we'd be able to cruise up towards Lundy and then free off for a two sail blast across the channel.

Early start it would be ....