Sunday 9 April
At watch changeover at 0300, Mate found us motorsailing, and watched Orion gradually sink into the sea to the South. By 0500, as the wind continued to veer onto the nose, she struggled with the lack of winches to release the preventer in order to haul the mainsail onto a close reach, winch in the staysail sheet, still feeling very stiff, and finally give Trevver a rest: peace at last. The new bimini frame also impedes her reach to the clutches that hold the sheets when they’re not on the winch, and a knee that is too painful to kneel on doesn’t improve things.
Now officially in Atlantic waters (more or less), conditions changed again as the wind felt fresher and a high level misty cloud had blown in, obscuring a beautifully bright third quarter moon. 0600 saw a murky lightening through fifty shades of grey at watch handover, but it felt surprisingly warm even without a triumphant sunrise to lift the spirits. Some risk of murking this morning – big ships sneaking up on me by lurking in the murk.
At 0800 Skipper woke the Mate to begin preparations for our final approach: the Isles of Scilly were distinct on the horizon at last. Trevver was roused from his brief respite, the sails were furled or dropped and the pilotage notes were checked at regular intervals. Already aware of the weather forecast, and of the best anchorages for each wind direction, the crew decided not to head for the typical first Scilly landfall of St Mary’s harbour, but to seek protection from the incoming Northerly wind by tucking into Porth Cressa, on the South side of the isthmus. This was where the fun really began…
There seemed to be a mooring field just where Skipper had elected to drop the anchor, so he decided to tie up to a mooring buoy instead. Trouble was, there was no pick-up buoy, and he struggled to lasso the buoy with a mooring warp. Mate went forward to ‘help’, and somehow in leaning over the bow they both managed to activate their MOB1 man overboard alerts, stored inside their lifejackets, causing the chart plotter alarm to sound. Having realised it was their own signals, Mate decided they must inform Falmouth Coastguard of the false alarm, and both crew were preoccupied with this while the unsecured mooring warp gently slipped off the buoy and we started drifting gently towards the rocky beach. Fortunately Skipper noticed before I was in any real danger, and I was soon firmly tied on. Apart from this inauspicious ending, the crew were quite pleased with themselves at completing a passage of 192 sea miles in just under 38 hours.
No sooner had I settled to my mooring than it looked like the harbourmaster was hot on our tail for mooring fees – usually not payable at anchor. However, it soon became clear that this was but a local fisherman returning from a regular inspection of his pots, and he had booty aboard. After a very pleasant chat, he offered my people a pair of beautiful lobsters for what they considered a very reasonabl
e price, along with a lump of seaweed to keep them calm under, in the fish bucket, until it was time to cook them for supper. The freshest of seafood with a glass of cool white in beautiful surroundings and a stunning sunset – Paradise regained.