I left on April 30th from Port Solent thinking I would probably have good weather by this time of the year. WRONG. Apart from one leg of the journey I have had miserable weather and the wind on the nose all the way. It was not going to be any different on the Mylor to Newlyn leg.
I left Mylor in good spirits and it seemed like a good day as always the further in to the cruise the worse the weather became. But as you can see the seas were relatively flat.
Which only left me with a small problem to contend with. The visibility to begin with was down to maybe two miles, this was fine as I had also set the AIS (Automatic Identification System)up for a two mile range. This little gizmo is brilliant it shows any large vessels within a predefined range and all large vessels are required by law to carry AIS transponders. This means in laymans language that I get a little triangle show up un the chartplotter were there is a tanker or such like. It also gives me the tankers or cargo vessels MMSI number so I can radio them directly, the course of the vessel, its speed and its bearing amongst other information. So I had no problems with the visibility being down to 2 miles. Lizard here I come!!!
What I didn’t know until it was to late to turn back was that visibility was reducing down to approximately 50 meters and I would need to use the fog horn every minute whilst I couldn’t see. I have a little fog horn which you have to blow through a little like a bugle. No easy task whilst you are controlling the sails and steering on a course you cant see and all the time puffing your lungs up in order to blow the fog horn. EVERY 60 SECONDS.
There are no photos of this as they all appear as just grey with nothing to see. Needless to say I didn’t see the Lizard peninsular as it passed in the cloak of mist which finally thinned out once I was well past the point at which I could have seen it.
However I was able to use for the first time as well the new Radar that I installed. This was spun up and transmitting the whole time I was in the sea mist. This meant I could see other boats as a little orangy dot on the plotter which I could hardly take my eyes off.
However as soon as I thought the mist was lifting it as good as disappeared in a few seconds at which point two other yachts passed by. This was to prove quite significant for future travel!
Finally in Newlyn harbour and all tied up. A piper starts the evening off with a rendition of Scotland
And finally sunshine. You wouldn’t believe how horrible it was earlier in the day, gray damp wet miserable are only a few things I could call it!
Newlyn turned out a lovely little port although boasting only limited amenities as it is a working fishing harbour. I also met a guy on the next boat by the name of Peter Svenson and his son Andreas who had just bought there 40foot sun odysee and was going to sail it back to Sweden. He was a Major in the Swedish army and had a real gung ho attitude to everything. He was in seventh heaven when he was able to buy a large lobster for ten pounds off of a fishing boat which had just returned from the sea. I was to sample some of this Lobster later on along with some beer and a few drams of whiskey.
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