We got up at 5am and left Dartmouth before even making a cup of tea. This was worth it as we got a good fair tide round Start Point, which pushed our speed up to 9 knots at times. Otherwise we had a day of variable winds with much sail changing trying to make the best of what we were sent. For the last few hours the wind died and we motored.
The route from Start Point to Falmouth goes very close to the Eddystone rock, with its current lighthouse being the fourth in about 350 years. The rock itself is a pillar rising from the seabed some 60 metres below to form a low platform continually swept by the waves. It is no wonder that it wrecked so many ships and that so much effort was put into building a lighthouse.
When we got to Falmouth we found quite a collection of old and old-style boats already here, although the Falmouth Classics don't get going for another day or two. 'Phoenix' (below) looks like something out of the eighteenth century, but was in fact built in 1929, and converted to her old style rig for work in films. We eventually tied up alongside a French lifeboat built in 1955.
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