Dartmouth to St Mawes Cornwall UK

Leaving Dartmouth behind us

Dartmouth Castle

We left Dartmouth at 1020 on Tuesday 24 August, a time predicated on catching the first of the favourable tide to round Start Point and to carry it for as long as possible towards Falmouth.

Dartmouth Harbour entrance with Dartmouth Castle to starboard and Kingswear Castle to port

Dartmouth was quite grey as we left, though not as grey as when we had arrived, but it was fun to see the castle at the entrance from the sea again, having recently toured it from the land.

Reg enjoying some fun sailing on a beautiful day

Passing the Start, the wind picked up a bit, the sun came out and it turned into a beautiful sailing day.

Our favourite sailplan

As we turned downwind for Falmouth, we poled out the genoa, our favourite sailplan, and delighted in watching the dolphins which rushed in to join us and which seemed to be having as much fun playing with BV as we were having watching them.

Dolphins

It was a good-sized pod, maybe 10-12 animals, and the first of many that we were to see on our cruise.

MPS flying as we passed Eddystone Light

By mid-afternoon the wind had dropped somewhat so we hoisted the MPS but only for about an hour and a half as the wind dropped further and, with a low apparent wind, the sail just slatted around, sometimes filling nicely, sometimes wrapping itself around the forestay.  At 1630 we ran out of patience, lowered the sail and switched on the iron topsail.

Nearly there.  Sunset on the final approach to Falmouth Harbour

We spent the final few hours under power, hoping that we might make it into St Mawes before the sun set but it was not to be and sun sank below the horizon whilst we were still just outside Falmouth Harbour.  However, the long period of twilight played in our favour and we made it into St Mawes, dropping the anchor clear of the moorings on the north side of the harbour just as darkness descended properly.

St Mawes, Cornwall, UK

Sightseeing near Dartmouth UK

Whaler racing at the Dartmouth Royal Regatta

Our visit to Dartmouth happened to coincide with the first few days of the Dartmouth Royal Regatta.  Yacht racing took place outside of the river so we didn’t see that but our mid-stream mooring gave us a ringside seat for the daily rowing races along the river.  However, our primary reason for visiting Dartmouth was not for the regatta but to see our friends Nici and Neil.  Sadly Nici had to visit her mother at short notice and so we only saw her briefly but that didn’t stop us from spending the next few days sightseeing with Neil.

View across the harbour mouth from Dartmouth Castle to the castle on the Kingswear side.  During the
Napoleonic Wars, a chain was strung between the two buildings which could be raised to the sea surface to
stop enemy ships from entering the harbour and then lowered to the seabed to allow friendly shipping to
come and go

Neil (with Saffy, the Red Setter) and Nicky
 enjoying the view from the cannon emplacement.  
The building behind housed the windlass
 to raise and lower the defensive chain

On one of our first walks around Dartmouth and its environs Neil took us to Dartmouth Castle.  Building began in the 1380s at the behest of John Hawley, a privateering mayor of Dartmouth, and the castle was expanded and developed over the centuries, last seeing active service in WWII.  English Heritage now runs the site, focusing on the castle’s 15^th century development as a purpose-built platform for ‘ship sinking’ heavy cannon as well as on its 19^th century gun batteries.  After a glance at the single-entry prices we quickly decided to join English Heritage (15 months for the price of 12) and vowed to get VFM out of our membership by visiting a good number of English Heritage’s sites in the South West!

The views from the castle’s walls are, unsurprisingly, rather good, and the displays too are excellent, if somewhat reduced when we visited ‘due to Covid’.

View into the harbour from Dartmouth Castle

Exterior view of Berry Pomeroy Castle from what was the moat, showing the defended entrance which
originally had a drawbridge and portculis

The next day, we visited Berry Pomeroy Castle.  Billed as ‘the perfect romantic ruin tucked away in woodland’, it began life as the family castle of the 15^th century Pomeroys.  The external walls and gatehouse have/had all the essentials of a defended castle – moat, drawbridge with a counter-balancing portcullis, holes for pouring boiling oil or water on the heads of invaders and slit windows for defensive archers and, later, musketeers.

As the years progressed, the castle was extended and became less a castle more an impressive,
somewhat defended, house

Behind the external façade, the castle was developed through the Elizabethan and Jacobean years by the Seymour family (of Henry VIII’s Jane), into a grand mansion.

Original gatehouse from the inside of the castle

It’s all ruins now, of course, but standing inside looking up at the upper storey windows and viewing the remains of each floor level with their huge fireplaces, it is clear that this was the home of a very wealthy and influential family.  Why it fell into ruin was not clear to us but it makes a fascinating adjunct to the intact Elizabethan mansions we have visited – a bit like being able to view a body’s skeleton.

Rear of the house – look the impressive number of floors

Dartmoor

Top of the tor (not a very high one!)

With Dartmoor on our doorstep and the weather looking settled, we also took a walk on the moor, which included ‘bagging’ our first tor (not a high one and I’ve now forgotten its name!).  We had a lovely walk, as did Saffy, who relished plenty of time off the lead.  And the views from the top of the tor were beautiful too.

View from the top

Totnes Castle – a proper junior school lesson in Norman motte and bailey stuff!

On our way back to Dartmouth we stopped into Totnes again.  We’d visited the town on our return from Berry Pomeroy and had enjoyed a walk along the river as well as a short stroll around the centre, filled with medieval buildings now housing artists’ galleries and New Age shops.

And here it is in real life (plus ye olde picnic benches and welcome booth!)

This time we went at Nicky’s insistence who wanted to see the town’s well preserved motte and bailey, citing memories of lessons on Norman keeps at primary school.

Not a lot of space inside the defended motte

Archer’s-eye view

It’s a great little castle and the views from the ramparts of the motte are excellent.  Plus there’s a nice short walk around what was the moat.  But the emphasis is definitely on ‘little’.  Even compared to Dartmouth Castle, which is a compact place, Totnes Castle is small.

Lookout’s view across Totnes, though somewhat more built up than it was in the 11^th century!

We stayed in Dartmouth for 4 days in which time we had a lovely time with Neil and Saffy, and we even manged to complete a few boat chores: servicing the heads – an inevitable boat job, pickling the watermaker, tweaking the new electronics and generally checking over many of the systems which haven’t had as much care and attention lavished on them as they have been used to over the previous few years.

View from the mid-stream pontoon in
classic southwesterly clag

And we enjoyed a couple of delicious meals out and some good food in, including a barbecue, with Neil.  But on Tuesday 24 Aug, the wind set in again from the east and it was time to move on west to Falmouth.

And the regatta continues….

Dartmouth, Devon, UK

Guernsey to Dartmouth UK

We really hadn’t taken Blue Velvet to sea very much since we had returned to Guernsey in June 2020. That was largely due to the Covid-19 travel restrictions but also because we had got ourselves distracted with some fairly major house renovations. So, with the easing of the travel restrictions that came towards the end of the summer, we set about planning a 6 week mini-cruise. The Ocean Cruising Club was running a West Country gathering in Falmouth and so we signed up for that and then looked closely at what was feasible with the Common Travel Area (CTA) regulations. Southern Ireland has always been a cruising ground that we hoped to explore and, as it is part of the CTA, it should be an easy place for us to visit. So, Guernsey to Falmouth was the plan and then onwards towards Ireland, perhaps stopping at the Isles of Scilly on the way. However, as we approached our Friday 20 August departure date the weather forecast offered a nice alternative to aim for. Falmouth would have us sailing close hauled for the whole passage and most likely a beat towards the end. Dartmouth, however, being a little further east would be a shorter and much more comfortable sail with the added bonus of possibly giving us the chance to spend the weekend with our friends Neil and Nici Strevens who have retired there. There was even the possibility of an easterly wind a few days later to get us from Dartmouth to Falmouth.

Approaching the Off Casquets TSS

Thursday 19 August had an excellent 10-15 knot southwesterly wind, perfect for a beam reach all the way to Dartmouth so we slipped out lines in Beaucette Marina at 0535hrs to get a favourable push from the tides around Guernsey. Half an hour later we had hoisted the sails and set course for England sailing at over 7 knots.

If we maintained that speed it would only be a 10-hour passage across to Dartmouth. So, with BV bustling along we settled back into the sailing game and started to learn a little more about our new navigation equipment. Down below at the chart table and at the helm position I had fitted new Raymarine multifunction displays and had replaced the 20-year-old Pathfinder radar with a Quantum Doppler unit which can feed the radar picture to any of the displays and overlay it onto the chart display. I had also updated the autopilot computer and sensors so there was quite a lot of new technology to get to grips with.

The shipping lanes were going to provide the ‘learn about the new radar’ phase of the passage and Mother Nature added extra realism by reducing the visibility down to 1-2km to keep us on our toes. We are already big fans of AIS which transmits ship’s positions and displays them on our chart display. Now with the new radar on we also got paints of any smaller vessels or buoys that didn’t have a transmitter. We could have that with our old system but the radar display was only at the chart table and the radar unit took so much power to run that we tended to only use it when we really had to in fog. All in all we are very pleased with the new gear. It will take a little time to really get fully comfortable with it but it is definitely a step up on what we have been used to in most areas. And, as an added bonus, whilst the autopilot is using the old drive unit, with the new computer in control it is now almost silent when operating; not something we had expected at all. 

Approaching Dartmouth

With BV zipping along on a beam reach which is her fastest point of sail, by lunchtime we were getting very close to the entrance to Dartmouth. There were still patches of low cloud but the cliffs stood out well enough. The entrance to Dartmouth opened up in front of us and the wind allowed us to sail right into the entrance where we dropped the sails and switched to motoring. 

We had pre-notified the Harbour Master that we would be arriving in case there were any special Covid procedures for yachts arriving from Guernsey; provided that we were both double vaccinated there were not. So it couldn’t have been easier. We called them up as we got into the River Dart, they were expecting us and directed us to moor up on one of the mid-stream pontoons on the Kingswear side of the river. 

The Kingswear to Dittisham steam train

We had been slightly concerned that we would have difficulty finding a mooring as the Royal Dartmouth Regatta was due to start on the Saturday after we arrived. But that was not the case and we were tied up on the pontoon with the engine switched off at 1525hrs. A 70nm passage completed in just under 10 hours.

Dartmouth, Devon, UK

End of Day 27 Beaufort NC USA towards Guernsey

 

Dawn breaks…

…and the sun creeps above the horizon Our last night at sea was uneventful except that by midnight the wind had gone fully into the east and the tide had changed to run west so at watch changeover we switched the engine on and started motoring. And as dawn broke we found ourselves chugging along gently across increasingly smooth seas as the wind dropped away further.

A beautiful final morning at sea

Our careful husbanding of fuel meant that, even without the 40 litres we had transferred from the jerrycans the previous day, we had more enough diesel in the main tanks to motor the rest of the passage back to Guernsey, which looked a likely requirement given the weather forecast.

Pleinmont – Guernsey’s southwest tip

The Hanois lighthouse off the southwest of Guernsey

So it was just a case of pointing BV’s bow in the right direction and watching out for other traffic and, of course, our first glimpse of our island home.

The visibility was excellent and so we had a great view of the Hanois lighthouse off Guernsey’s southwest tip and the island’s south coast cliffs.

Enthusiastic welcome committee

As if seeing Guernsey again against beautiful blue skies were not enough, we were also completely spoilt by the arrival of a reception committee of dolphins.  They swam with us for 20 minutes both alongside us and in our bow wave.

Just fabulous!

The southern cliffs of Guernsey

When the dolphins sped off to other, more important, tasks we spent the remainder of our motor along the south coast, feasting our eyes on the cliffs and bays of home.  The morning light picked out the detail of the rocky inlets as we looked directly north but ahead, and into sun, it was all a little hazy.

Approaching St Martin’s Point with views across to Herm and Sark

However, the off-lying islands of Herm and Sark stood out clearly as we approached St Martin’s Point at the southeast tip of the Guernsey.

Rounding St Martin’s Point

Here we turned north and got our first sight of St Peter Port, the main town on the island.

Top: St Martin’s Point with the light at its base standing out clearly. Bottom left: Fermain Bay.  
Bottom right: Looking up the Little Russel towards Town (St Peter Port, the white buildings)
and Castle Cornet (centre of the picture)

As we headed up the coast towards St Peter Port we called Guernsey Coastguard on VHF Ch20, as we had been instructed to do, to announce our arrival.  We confirmed that we were both healthy and still planning to make landfall at Beaucette and gave our ETA so that Guernsey Border Agency staff could be tasked to meet us and brief us on the self-isolation procedures.

Carol-Anne and Richard came out to meet us – but, of course, maintained an appropriate social distance

And just as we finished on the radio, we were met by our second reception committee of the day.  Good friends Carol-Anne and Richard had tracked our progress home and came out to welcome us back to the Bailiwick – nautically socially distanced of course. 

St Peter Port and Castle Cornet off to our port side

It was great to see them and to catch up as best as we could by shouting between the boats.

Carol-Anne and Richard head off towards Herm for the day

Leaving St Peter Port astern

Abeam Castle Cornet, Carol-Anne and Richard disappeared off for their fun day out on the water whilst we continued north towards Blue Velvet’s new home in Beaucette Marina

St Peter Port view as we continued north

Whenever we’ve sailed to Guernsey before, we have always made landfall in St Peter Port.  Today, however, we were only permitted to arrive at Beaucette, a marina we had never even visited before.  So we took the opportunity to enjoy the views around the Little Russell….

Vale Castle, just to the north of Guernsey’s second port, St Sampson’s Harbour

….the whole of Guernsey was almost glowing in the sunshine.  We couldn’t stop thinking how lucky we were to have arrived back on a such a beautiful day.

Island view eastwards from the central Little Russell – Herm (left mid-ground), Brehon Tower (centre left), Sark (right background) and Jethou (right mid-ground) with Crevichon just to the left of Jethou

We weren’t the only people enjoying the beautiful day.  Though the pictures don’t show it, the Little Russell was alive with boats and people out making the most of the fabulous weather, light winds and smooth seas.

Following the approach transit into Beaucette Marine

Guernsey as was with Beaucette Quarry (now the marina) standing out clearly

Beaucette Marina is right at the northeast tip of Guernsey and was originally a granite quarry, one of the several hundred excavated on the island to extract granite for export, notably Diorite as used in the steps to St Paul’s Cathedral.  In 1968/1969 the Royal Engineers were employed to blow a hole in the sea cliff, allowing the quarry to flood and thus be converted to a marina.

Royal Engineers working in the entrance to Beaucette Quarry/Marina

Final approach to the marina entrance

The task of blowing a hole in the sea cliff almost proved too difficult for the Royal Engineers, who started the job in 1968 and had to stop and then return the next year, with even more personnel, to finish off their mission.  The entrance looks, and feels, very narrow, particularly when there is any sea running, but it is actually 15m wide when there’s 3m over the sill.  It might look so narrow because of the dogleg turn to port immediately inside the entrance.  There’s not a huge amount of space to manoeuvre here, so we called up on the radio to make sure that no one was planning to come out as we made our way in.

We were too busy to get any photos as we went through the gap by can report that, yes, it does feel very narrow.  More so when there’s a sea running!

Having been told that we had to self-isolate at home, instead of going to a quarantine berth we were directed to BV’s new mooring.  It too turned out to be very tight to get into but was the only remaining mooring suitable for a 42ft yacht available on the island, so we were very pleased to have been allocated it.

Whilst we waited for a visit from Guernsey Border Agency (GBA) officials we quickly packed up some important bits and pieces to take home with us.  The GBA (Customs and Immigration) officers arrived pretty quickly, processed our arrival – from a distance – and then, with BV closed down, we moved into a room in our house to begin our 14 days of self-isolation.  Fortunately, 2 days later we received a very welcome call telling us that our request for exemption from self-isolation had been approved; 26 full days at sea, as proved by our satellite tracker, was deemed to be more than enough time in ‘self-isolation’.  So, in a bit of a daze, we began adjusting to life on dry land, meeting up with family and friends and starting on the million and one jobs on BV and ashore that needed attention.  

Our trip home had been wonderful conclusion to a fabulous journey.  Yes, it came sooner than we might have hoped and we certainly hope to be able to go off long-distance sailing on BV at some point in the future.  But with so much uncertainty surrounding travel in the face of COVID-19 returning home was exactly the right thing for us.  And the trip home, whilst also not panning out exactly as we had originally envisaged, was very successful both in terms of the time it took, the weather we experienced and the fact that, after 26-odd days at sea, we were still talking to each other and could quite happily have continued on further.  So, in time, we’ll point BV’s bow west again with our eyes on more diving in the Honduran Bay Islands, a summer’s cruising in Newfoundland (or maybe 2 summers?) and, perhaps, a Pacific crossing – we’ve certainly proved we can go that distance!

Passage statistics:

Position at 1000A 24 Jun: N49 30 W003 31 (Beaucette Marina, Guernsey)

Midday to 1000A distance through water: 131 nautical miles (average 6.0 knots).

Midday to 1000A GPS distance towards destination: 127 nautical miles

Midnight to 1000A distance through water: 56 nautical miles (average 5.6 knots)

Midnight to 1000A GPS distance towards destination: 52 nautical miles

Total miles covered through water:  4068 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Guernsey): Zero nautical miles

End of Day 27 - Guernsey