Friday 12 May 2023

Falmouth!

We had originally planned to stay in Plymouth until Saturday morning. There was to be a Gaffers Parade of Sail in front of Plymouth Hoe with press coverage and with Bonita in lead position.  However this morning it emerged that things might be rather different. We were told by the King's Harbourmaster - who is in charge of a naval port- that there would be a nuclear submarine passing through the harbour at about the same time. Any naval ship in the harbour area is accompanied by patrol craft, an exclusion zone etc and even the most venerable gaff rigged sailing boat could be seen as a potential risk to a  submarine entrusted with carrying the nations nuclear deterrent. Moving the parade of sail either back or forward an hour or so did not resolve the security concerns. Regretfully therefore the Parade had to be cancelled.
It was too nice a day to stay in port longer than necessary, so we left Sutton Harbour in Plymouth at about 11.30.
We were originally planning to go to Fowey and had light head  winds. However just as we were approaching the port a moderate N breeze sprung up. After all our days of contrary winds this was too good to miss so we decided to carry on to Falmouth. We had a fine sail along the Cornish coast with the boat at times exceeding 7 knots (with a fair tide but only about 0.5 knots). At the time the picture was taken the GPS showed a speed of 7.5 kts
We tied up in Falmouth about 8.00, in time to find at least one restaurant still open

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