We let our big green mooring buoy go , and gently motored out of the river . There were many boats anchored off Durgan beach and we were sorry not to be spending another day there. But feeling the need to get west, we pressed on. It was a lovely sail up the coast towards the Lizard… most southerly point of mainland Britain . Flat sea and a force 2 on the beam plus sunshine, what could be better?! We had the whole rig out and Angelique sailed on swiftly. The wind was NNW which of course was unfortunately the direction we had to sail after rounding the Lizard. We rounded the Lizard which is the most southerly headland of mainland Britain. The seas became choppy due to 20 knots of wind over tide conditions. We were now beating but as always Angelique just ploughed on through it all and into St Michaels bay. St Michaels mount is a famous castley thing on a rock .. in the bay…. like Lindisfarne. We were headed for Newlyn just beyond, where there is a marina ( of sorts) . We noticed a strange thing out to sea of us. A helicopter just hovering… I commented on it as it was strange and wondered if they were doing some sort of rescue training. We learned later on the news that a french trimaran had overturned due to hitting a submerged obstacle and it was indeed a rescue of him from the upside down hull. How scary. We radioed 5 miles out to ask permission to come in to Newlyn harbour. The website and phone number all said the same thing, basically that they never turned anyone away, but it’s a working harbour so fishing vessels have priority. Fair enough. A very friendly lady on the radio gave us the impression there was lots of room and we could just take our pick. Of course we set up on both sides having been used to things not being as we were lead to believe!!! It’s a lovely traditional harbour with strong stone breakwaters enclosing a protected huge oblong of water with long walls and plenty of room for fishing vessels to moor up along the walls. The marina on the other hand was jam packed full with very little manoeuvring space. True to form there wasn’t a free berth anywhere …… so we had no choice but to wedge ourselves in between a fishing boat called “ Girl Pamela” and another yacht who obviously wouldn’t be best pleased as he had a notice in his window saying “ leaving at 0600 on July 15. Set your lines accordingly” . Anyway we did get sorted and made peace with our neighbor who we promised we would be up at 0530 . Reason being that having been to the harbour office and paid our dues, they told us girl Pamela would most likely be going out at 0500😳. Despite all of that and having to try at least 4 different electric points to get it to work, There’s no doubt Newlyn is a real place. A full on fishing harbour, tolerating and benefiting from visiting yachts.
What I learned today….. all the interesting bits of engineering on a fishing boat that are useful for securing ones boat to. Makes a change from cleats 😊
Sue x
Angelique 