Edward Hazelden

Yealm departure 0720 Delayed 0600 departure as overheat buzzer sounded about a minute before cast off. Fault found and sorted. Navigated out of the Yealm, round the Great Mewstone, past the Eastern end of the Breakwater, across Plymouth Sound, through the Bridge to the West of Drake's Island, round Cremyll Point and SLOWLY navigated in to the Multihull Centre at Millbrook Tied up at 0915

0700 Dep SYC Boiling water by Exmouth Marina, current brought boat speed down to 2.2kn. The wind filled in off Dawlish and the advertised 0.7m swell turned into 2/3m swell! 0945 Orestone 1015 Berry Head 1245 Start Point, the water finally flattened and we were doing 8/9kn. As we had been motorsailing we dropped the engine to neutral to see what difference the engine made and we were still doing 8kn, so engine off we proceeded under genoa. Top speed was 10.4kn 1330 Salcombe 1545 Yealm entrance 1630 engine off and moored on a visitor bouy.

Less than 100m visibility at the start of the day! Finally got decent viz about midday, and departed at 1430. After yesterday huge seas today was flat calm. No dolphins today 😮‍💨 back up the Exe, wind and tide together straight back on to our mooring.

The advertised 9-15kn, never went above 13kn. The 1m swell was 3m at times and felt like we were Mid-Atlantic. 3 pods of dolphins, got our smiles back. Rounding Berry Head the wind suddenly decided 23kn was needed! Then we had to wait in the Fairway as the boat ahead of us was having a nightmare in the breeze to get onto the pontoon. Alls well that ends well.

Quite lumpy, wind on the nose. Dolphin encounter. Very bouncy night

I forgot to turn off the tracking until after mooring and putting sails away so 45 mins earlier probably. Don't zoom in to the chequered flag, it was 17kn wind 90° to tide! The advertised 5-15kn wind this morning never materialised, 11kn highest for the whole sail. Sailed from the Orestone to Start Point, then motored to Salcombe. Great to have following seas and a following wind for once

Left Brixham in complete calm, Torbay or TorBiscay as my wife calls it, was lovely. Beautiful and flat all the way to Exmouth, dolphins off Dawlish playing at the bow. Turned in to Exmouth, wind started up, choppy at the mooring, a bit touch and go to tie up. Half hour later flat calm and sun!

Managed to sail the first third, hitting 8.6kn at one point, then we couldn't get close enough to the wind, so we had to motor. As we were coming abreast with Dartmouth we worked out instead of trying to make it all the way to Exmouth to catch the late tide, we could stop in Brixham and catch the midday tide tomorrow. Brixham Marina had a space and the F&C were very tasty

Lovely departure from Dittisham, played chicken with the various ferries. Beautiful flat calm across Start Bay and then at Start Point the forecast 16/17kn turned into 22/23kn! Very bouncy until past Prawle Point and calmed down as we turned into Salcombe. Wind from behind going up towards the visitor moorings, engine on tickover doing 7kn!

0530 wake up for the second day in a row! Left the Exe on the falling tide. beautifully calm until Torbay where the NW wind had been able to build up a bit of a sea. back protected by the cliffs until the Mewstone, then we had 20+kn and 1.5m seas which died down after passing the second cardinal. We love Dittisham, holiday started