To The Dart

26-27 April 2017
Plymouth Yacht Haven to Salcombe and The Bag to Normandy Pontoon

Key points:

1. Forecast NE 4/5 with no mention of squalls from ESE.
2. It is important to be careful when reversing in a marina in current.  Just because you have escaped from the berth does not mean that you have also got out of the current.
3. First voyage anxiety is normal.
4. Salcombe is very quiet on the last Wednesday in April.
5. "The Bag" is a simple and easy place to berth but the WIFI doesnt work.
6. Just because there is a strong current 20 metres out from the pontoon does not mean that there will be the same current alongside the pontoon.
7. Fenders are a good thing.

28 April 2017
Salcombe to The Dart


We made it, without undue excitement, all the way to our new mooring at Noss on Dart.

The flubber trip to Stoke Gabriel Pontoon took 40 minutes with the tide.

 The Pontoon at Stoke Gabriel

Spring Cruise completed without misshap.

The Truth

Hello Again Dear Reader(s).

You will of course remember (and will perhaps still be anxious about) the cliff-hanging end to our 2016 Epic Adventure.

What indeed, was the sinister reason for our engine's enfeablement?

You last heard of Albatross while she was resting ashore at Plymouth Yacht Haven Quay.
On close inspection we had found little to explain her problems.  Some barnacles on her bottom (but who hasn't?) and many on her prop.
Jean duly pollished the prop and I painted her bottom.

A nice man who normally fixes car engines extracted and re-threaded Albatross' broken exhaust stud (£26) and our favourite motor factor sold me 4 new studs for a couple of quid.  Eat your heart out Yanmar.
A marine engineer said we needed her back in the water to test the engine.

We put her back in the water. We tested the engine. The engine is fine !

So it was just a dirty prop.

We had sailed from Spain to Plymouth, enduring the near-death experiences of electrical storms, sterngear entangements, chronic sleep depravation and channel shipping (not to mention wanton hyperbole) ... just because of a DIRTY PROP.
  
Sorry Martin.

 

A dirty prop.