9 – The return to Plymouth
0600 last Wednesday
The buoy at Turnaware Point is some three miles from the entrance to Carrick Roads. In the distance is Pendennis Point and ‘a gateway to a boundless ocean’.
The trip down river had a certain sense of urgency. The sky said it – there was wind up there.
Continue reading
Malpas was the furthest upriver I wanted to take the boat. Any further and we would need a quay to lean against when the tide fell – possible, but not necessary on this trip.
The plan was to moor for the night against one of the visitors pontoons upriver..
It was a poor day for photography. I had spent the night in Falmouth Yacht Harbour, sheltered from the strong easterly wind by the pilot boat Arrow.
During a passage west, I have been thinking about the difficulty of taking photographs of the sea that reflect the actual sea state, particularly the more exhilarating sea states. In the previous post, I hinted that adding context to the image gave it considerably more depth.
Continue reading
I am back from a week’s ‘cruise’ – west to Falmouth then up the River Fal, before the weather brought an end to it. I had originally planned to sail back to Plymouth today as we have a longstanding arrangement to meet with friends tomorrow. However, the inshore forecast for today reads:
Continue reading
I had plenty of time to reflect on single-handed sailing during the week away. I passed many yachts, some with large sociable crews, more with large racing crews. They are the norm. So what about single-handed? Is it about sailing from A to B with no crew or is it something else – sailing for the sake of it, a little of which can be illustrated on camera but most of which remains in the mind of the sailor? The following records a few moments on the passage back from Dartmouth to Plymouth on that Friday evening.
How would you spend all day in a space about six feet across from back rest to back rest, and approximately ten foot long with no headroom to stand upright?