The ‘Erly Tour – Falmouth to Milford Haven

8 June 2021 – Falmouth to Milford Haven

I’d gone back to Exeter with Alison for the weekend and returned to Falmouth on an earlyish train on Monday morning. The first thing I did was take the dinghy over to the fuel berth to pick up 20 litres of diesel. I popped it into the tank and bled the fuel system I was then able to start the engine again.

My new crew, Colin, was due to arrive during the afternoon so I decided just to have a quick tidy up in the boat and clear out the shed (aka the fore cabin) so he’d have somewhere to sleep. I could take Moon Shadow over to the fuel berth in the morning before we set off.

Colin arrived and I went over to meet him and bring him over to the boat and get him settled in. We went ashore in the evening for a meal and a “get to know you” as we’d only communicated via email previously. We seemed to get on very well.

In order to hit the tidal gate at Land’s End, we needed to leave Falmouth around 09:00 so we slipped the mooring around 08:30 before heading over to the fuel berth and filling the tank. And then, just like that, we were off!

We had pretty light winds and the going was quite slow but we managed to average about four knots and rounded Land’s End at around 20:30.

With the wind almost due south and getting lighter, we decided that heading directly for Milford Haven would be a bit awkward with the rolling of the boat giving rise to the constant possibility of an uncontrolled gybe. Because of that, we opted for the slightly longer but easier route of following the Cornish coast North East up to Lundy where we could gybe then head North West to Milford Haven. Even at this angle, I was still concerned about a gybe so rigged a preventer just to be on the safe side.

At around midnight I was called on the VHF by a naval vessel asking if I had my navigation lights on. I confirmed that I had and was told that they were only just visible – from four miles away. As the requirement for a vessel under 12 metres is for the lights to be visible at one mile I thought that was pretty good!

It was a pretty uncomfortable night, very rolly and with the sails “slatting” the whole night neither of us got too much sleep although I did come onto watch in the early hours and found Colin asleep in the companionway which I wasn’t particularly pleased about!

We made our gybe at around 11:30 five miles west of Lundy and set course for Milford Haven. It had been my intention to go to the anchorage at Dale but I was feeling pretty grubby and wanted a shower. Plus I was pretty sure that I was going to ask Colin to leave and that would be easier to do in the marina so we headed for that. As it turned out we only just made the free flow in the sea lock at 19:00. It had been 158 miles and almost exactly 35 hours.