Day 8 - Round the Bend

Fistral beach stopover waiting for the tide

Fistral beach stopover waiting for the tide

Caption not possible

Fistral beach stopover waiting for the tide

 Newlyn to Newquay 

Another day of several halves... extremes of good and bad.

The forecast was the same as for the previous day at Newlyn so we were optimistic of finding some decent breeze. Forecast E ish f3 sounded spot on.

Drifted to just off Mousehole when the breeze filled in exactly as the forecast. The spinnaker went up and stayed up all the way around Land's end. This was champagne sailing at its best ... and what a location! Fantastic. Best bit of sailing I've done in a long long while.

After a starboard tack leg past land's end the plan was to luff up gently until probably ha ing to drop the spinnaker and then do a white sail fetch a long the north corm9sh coast.

Reality ..... sucks sometimes. The minute we put the kite away the wind switched off completely. Here began the most baffling bit of sailing I've ever done. Wind going.in circles - literally - we were seemingly surrounded.by wind but we're utterly incapable of working out which whay it was going. We had the tide w8th us and this carried us out of this hole into a bit more breeze again. Close hauled on porttack got us past st Ives. A pod of dolphins came and checked us out which was great.fun. 

The wind got lighter and with the new target of Padstow we tried to make the best 9f the day. Tide aga9nst us and the wind dropping pushed us in to anchor off fistral beach. We got going.agaim when the tide did turn but in next.to no wind we paddle/drifted 8nto ,Newquay. 

This was not as easy as it sounds... Newquay^s lights are truly baffling from the sea. Thankfully we have GPS. Got into Newquay harbour at 03.30.


Tomorrow... we might stay here. Depends on the wind. We could see about getting To Lundy prior to jumping off for our Bristol channel crossing into Wales.