Page 16 - Yachter Spring 2023

16 CRUISING REPORTS
sailed further west looking into Baltimore (big name, small place), then moved on through an interesting sailing area sheltered by many islands, with plenty of passages just crying out to be sailed.We found
a mooring in Schull for lunch aboard. Interestingly we had an entanglement with the main mooring buoy that was so heavily laden with the riser that it was barely
afloat. During lunch other lines we hadn’t previously noticed wrapped around the keel.After ten minutes of head scratching and careful motoring to avoid getting the prop and rudders joining the snare, the main mooring buoy popped to the surface from behind the keel.A new one for us after sixty years of finding most ways of making a mess afloat.We had a delightful close hauled sail to Crookhaven, sailing through the passage behind Long Island, overtaking a Sadler
32 we had been crossing paths with since Kinsale.
Ashore after another pleasant exchange with a land based Customs Officer who was in contact with a cutter offshore (fortunately all was well with us as they could find us on their data base), we found the crew of Scarlet Lady, the Sadler 32, who were at the start
of a Great Britain circumnavigation.We all settled in for the night at O’Sullivan’s bar.
The weather forecast now looked reasonable enough for the next couple of days to start sailing homeward,so at 07.30 the next morning we were off, with a fifteen knot south westerly breeze propelling us rapidly out past Fastnet Lighthouse and toward Land’s End.The wind slowly veered to west north west by nightfall, the only problem being the autopilot had lost its marbles so it was then hand steering.We
managed to get the jib poled out, which kept the speed up, but required intense steering concentration to keep set during the chilly night.We wriggled further south than we had originally intended and went south of the Seven Stones, then crossed the Land’s EndTSS at the southern end putting the spinnaker up, which made course keeping a lot easier. It was a mixed sort of day with light rain, but we were making good progress to the east and a timely handing of the big blue sail was made as we approachedThe Lizard overfalls.We then rounded up to the north east and followed the coastline towards Falmouth Bay.The force five westerly breeze held all the way to Falmouth’s Pendennis Castle and we were tied up at Town Quay by 18.30, that was 226 miles entrance to the entrance in thirty-four hours averaging 6.6 knots.
Leaving Royal CorkYacht Club at Crosshaven