Plymouth weekend June 6 - 8 – report by skipper Alan Howells

Yacht ‘Pantalaimon’ Bavaria 36

Crew: Alan Howells (Skipper), Dougal Matthews, Kath Liddiard, Naomi Gillingham, Neil Webber, Rhian Phillips and Sue Fowle.

We departed QAB 21:00 hrs Friday in a nice SE breeze which bode well for overnight to Falmouth but were forced to turn back due to technical problems.

Left again at 10:30 Saturday wind generally Southerly F4 for Fowey in company with a large coastal race, but we stayed further offshore to avoid interfering with them. Rather than arrive too early we diverted to about ¾ across St Austell Bay, prior to broad reaching, and dropping sails in entrance then mooring fore and aft in Pont Pill.

Night out in Polruan – the pub just up the hill – where we had a meal that was both excellent and extremely substantial. Following that we were introduced to the local sport of ‘Pig Racing’. The pigs were large fluffy and electrically powered and proceeded by a sort of shuffling motion with occasional stop to shake their noses. They ran in lanes in a wooden structure with a starting gate. It was possible to name an individual pig for a fee with the possibility of winning a bottle of wine or to bet on any pig. This created considerable excitement with much shouting especially from one of our party whilst another remained quietly winning.

The following morning we again left with the race, staying a bit further offshore to leave them room. The weather was brilliant sunshine and the wind generally Southerly and a bit stronger than the previous day. Rather than reef we depowered the rig a bit to make helming comfortable. We still seemed to be keeping our ‘place’ about half way up the race fleet. Later it clouded over and the wind eased a bit so we powered up the rig and began to move up through the racing fleet inshore of us. On approaching Draystone, the rain became extremely heavy reducing the visibility to about 400m. The rain flattened the sea , except for some sharp crescent shaped waves from the squall and the raindrops were bouncing creating a sort of white layer about 1m high – a quite surreal view.

Choosing the easier point of sail we reached to the Eastern entrance where the rain stopped followed shortly by the wind. The crew who had previously had important things to attend to below deck magically appeared. We had watched one of those large dinghys with ‘scaffolding’ on the sides go over several time and the crew appeared to be having difficulty righting it. There were on their own with no safety cover and, as the only other vessel about, we went over and asked if they required assistance. A rack had come loose but after a minute or so they decided that they would be OK without assistance. Some time later I saw them sailing.

We motored back in to refuel, clean up and eat lunch to end a good weekend.