Cowes is one of the sailing capitals of the world. Home to the famous Cowes Week racing, the start of the Fastnet race and the Round the Island race. The prestigious Royal Yacht Squadron looks out over the harbour entrance and it’s start line is used for many sailing races. As a mecca for sailing there are numerous prestigious yacht and sailing clubs. The town is on the Medina River, Isle of Wight. It looks North […]
We needed to get the hydraulics fixed on Trouper. That meant a visit to Hamble Yacht Services as they know the boat and had originally installed the hydraulics. We decided to make a long weekend out of the chore. Friday morning we set off on the early falling tide. Getting up before you’ve gone to bed, as they say in Monty Python, is not much fun but we were rewarded with a calm, warm day […]
Trouper’s home port used to be Lymington and it’s one of our favourite spots in Southern England. When we’d initially dreamed about buying a boat we said we’d keep it in one of the marinas in Lymington. Tom’s father kept his day boat, a Hawk 20, at Lymington so we used to sail regularly from Lymington across to the Isle of Wight to: Yarmouth, New Town or Cowes as day sails on the little boat. However […]
The sunset was beautiful. We’d sailed West. Sunglasses on as we pointed Trouper towards the last of the sun. The next half hour was dusk and it was dark when we arrived in Yarmouth. We’d pre-booked a berth in the marina though, in October, at the tail end of the season there was plenty of space. The leading lights made the entrance straightforward, even in the dark. You just have to dodge the ferry that […]
Mylor. The last stop on our Summer Cruise of Devon and Cornwall. Our first challenge, finding the channel to enter the marina. This was marked but depth of tide meant that we could only enter +/- 3hours around high tide due to a shallow area in the channel. We found the entrance due to a larger boat ahead of us. They’d slowed down. Presumably they were waiting for more tide to allow them over the shallow […]
London was pouring with rain, a thunder storm had taken out a signal box on the train line, there were no trains and it was the start of our Summer holiday. Luckily we managed to squeeze our way onto the 6:00pm train to Plymouth and only arrived one hour later than planned. Plymouth was still steaming hot. They were still enjoying the last days of the heat wave that had come crashing to a halt […]
My first impression was the chop, the waves off the headland knocking the boat around and consequently the boom as I was trying to drop the mainsail. We’d turned North to head for the entrance and the pilot book mentioned that there was a bit of a chop that you have to grit your teeth and just get through. As we got further inshore the chop began to ease off. I looked around me and […]
Fowey, pronounced Foy, is named after the river. We’d motor-sailed from Salcombe partly to charge the batteries but partly to avoid the beat into the South Westerly. We’ve sailed to Fowey a few times to race in Regatta Week. We visit more regularly by land as we have family living nearby. We like it a lot. It’s a first for me to sail from the East to gain the harbour entrance. It’s not an easy entrance to […]
The last full day of our holiday. We avoided this by sneaking in one last trip. Turning our back on Falmouth Bay we went upriver. We knew that you could, in a smaller boat than ours, get all the way to Truro. We’d settle for less than that. I’d wanted to climbi the trees at Trelissick so the first plan was to sail and anchor in the bay off Trelissick. As usual plans change. We […]
We woke to bright sunshine and a gentle breeze. The perfect day for a sail. We’d wanted to sail from Falmouth to the Scilly Islands but the timings and longer term weather forecast didn’t work out for us. Instead we sailed the 8 nautical miles to the Helford River that is West of Falmouth. We’d rounded Black Rock and set sail. Then I saw breaking waves to port. It seemed strange on such a perfect sailing day to see […]
On Land 