Life living on board a boat tends to go in ebbs and flows. Some days are relaxed when we can enjoy exploring new places; a few days are filled with elation when we manage to complete jobs which may have taken a few attempts to complete; others are filled with frustration when, despite endless research and planning, nothing goes to plan, some are very social when we meet new people, or old friends visit and finally a few days are stressful as we might be “sailing in unchartered waters” and need to repair/work out how to do things on our own or enter new, unfamiliar harbours. Fortunately, at the moment we have an army of experienced and knowledgeable people on hand who can help us with the latter while we get on with the former!
After a few days sheltering from some strong Easterly winds up the beautiful Truro River, waiting to find out what the next move was on fixing our prop, Richard (our trusted electrician and master of all trades), secured us a place at Pendennis Marina in the centre of Falmouth. We had a number of jobs to complete left over from before we launched and a couple of niggly issues that needed to be resolved.
Billy, our go-to marine electronics guy, visited us when we arrived to try and work out why our depth sounder kept losing signal – an annoying and dangerous trait we needed to get fixed as it seemed to happen at the worst possible times leaving us to guess the actual depth which is not an ideal situation, especially considering my recent history! In addition to this, we had Roy visit us to service our fire extinguishers. Roy was wonderful and came up with some good alternative solutions for our engine bay automatic extinguishers which saved us a substantial amount of money while increasing the range of the extinguishers if there was a fire.
Richard rode in on his white steed (read “van”) on Friday afternoon and set about completing the short, but essential, list of electrical jobs we had identified. Three days later we helped Richard pack up his tools after he completed the list of essential tasks, including fixing the watermaker (elation) which turned out to be a very lucky find as a couple of wires were arcing and a fuse had become so hot it had started melting, and finish wiring/installing our final solar panel. With everything now working as it should, we decided to remain in the marina for a couple of extra nights as strong winds were forecast and it seemed pointless having a few stressful nights on anchor when we had the opportunity of a protected, safe berth.
Cafes and bars with outside seating opened in mid-April and Falmouth was seeing an increasing number of visitors. We met some friends (social), Helen and Mick, who were visiting their daughter in Falmouth over the early Spring Bank Holiday weekend; invited William and Louise (social) over to the boat for coffee and caught up with Bea and Andy for a drink in a nearby bar. While in town Steve managed to buy a particular Cornish pasty he had been hankering after from our local café, after several earlier failed attempts as we had arrived too late and they had already sold out. We called in early and, much to Steve’s hungry joy, found there was one still available. I could almost see his mouth dripping with anticipation at the thought of devouring this much looked forward to pasty. We started walking back to the boat with Steve eating the pasty which was happily living up to his expectations. He was about to take a bite from the remaining half when a large seagull suddenly appeared from behind him, swooped down and with incredible accuracy, took the rest of the pasty, just as Steve was about to bite down on it – all done with such precision and so fast, the gull did not even touch Steve in the process!
Bea and Andy invited us for dinner on our last night in the marina. We had a lovely evening together with lots of conversation, laughter, good food, great company and maybe a little drink or two! Our times together are always so special and I have loved and valued the long winter we have spent with them both. Their company, patience and love has been wonderful and we feel humbled by their generosity. This was almost certainly the last time we will spend a full night with them on this trip and the thought of not knowing if/when we will share such special times with them again makes my heart lurch and throat ache. Bea and Andy have sold their boat and bought a mobile home so they can visit their daughter and grandchildren in Northern Ireland as well as hopefully head to Europe in the middle of May.
Big winds continued to buffer the Cornish coastline so we returned to our previous bolthole up the River Truro while we waited to be notified of our next haul out date. We had been in touch with the owners of the sister boat to Cerulean called Shadowfax who were visiting Falmouth. We made our way up the river and dropped anchor next to them before catching up with Tim and Emmie on board Cerulean (more social). It was lovely to meet them as we had been in touch with each other for over a year and we had followed and listened to their exciting sailing adventures to far off places in their lovely boat. The two boats have the same layout but, because Seastreams were privately commissioned, each boat has a very different feel and design features. Tim flew his drone and took some wonderful pictures of our boats sharing a beautiful anchorage. The next day we were joined by Remi, another Seastream 43 but this time a MK2 so a little older and a ketch (two masts). It was a privilege to have the three boats together for the first time and share experiences, hear sailing plans and learn more about these wonderful boats.
One day, while Steve and I sheltered from the cold rain and wind we heard a twang and then thud outside. A strange noise on a boat always puts you in high alert and I spun around to see two red webbed feet sticking up on the deck. A duck had tried flying through our rigging and must have mistimed his flight, hitting the starboard shroud with a twang and hitting the deck with a huge thud. Sadly it did not survive the experience and we now had a dead duck bleeding on the deck! We were in a quandary – as we don’t eat meat any more and couldn’t deal with the gutting and plucking of a (still warm) dead duck, do we keep it and offer it to someone else or give it a burial at sea? Before I could decide, Steve threw the recently deceased mallard into the water and we watched it float away! A short while later, when retelling the story, we regretted the decision as several people would have been keen of the gift of the beautiful bird.
Our first, multi-staying guests arrived in early May and we welcomed Marion and Suzanne on board (more social) as we collected them from Port Pendennis Marina. I shared a house with Suz and Marion in Cambridge in the early 80’s and Steve and I had travelled back to the UK 18 months earlier for Suz’s 60th birthday celebrations. Knowing the weather was going to be bad for the next couple of days, we took advantage of the light winds and sailed up the Truro River. Suz and Marion had taken the train from London and we were all excited at being able to spend four days on the boat – the longest time we’ve had together for nearly 40 years! The weather forecast was accurate and during the night the heavens opened, the temperature dropped and the wind spun us around in our sheltered anchorage, keeping the four of us hunkered down in the cabin together. Unfortunately Marion became more and more unwell and we all became extremely concerned about her as her temperature sore and she was obviously not her normal happy self. The next day, with Marion still not well, we headed back to Falmouth and picked up a mooring close to the town centre so, if needed we could seek medical help. Suz, Steve and I were able to get off the boat, leaving Marion to rest while we went for a walk.
Suz and Marion’s stay was extended by two days due to all trains being cancelled on the GWR line which covers SW England long distance travel. This was a bonus for several reasons – more time together, Marion could continue recovering from her bug (not Covid!) and we could enjoy the improved weather and sail to other bays. When they left us after six days together, it was with sadness but also happy in the knowledge they had experienced a taste of what our life is like living on anchor.
While Suz and Marion were with us, we were hauled out for the third time to try and discover why the engine was not performing as we would expect. Just before we were due to relaunch we managed to talk to a very informative man at Darglow, the manufacturer of our propeller. He informed us that we had the wrong gearbox ratio and our current propeller was too big for the gearbox on the new engine. As we launched I was still talking to the technician on the phone and passed this information on to the engineer who had installed the new engine. Fortunately, after an initial stressful and upsetting time letting the discovery sink in, it was agreed they would cover the cost of a new gearbox and haul us out again to fix the problem.
After spending a lovely final evening in the company of Bea and Andy and Louise and William we were lifted again for what, we hoped, was the final time before leaving the UK a few weeks later. In the last 12 months we have been lifted out the water five times, which is four times more than most other boats, so our hopes were high that this time everything would go smoothly. Oh, how naive we were!!!!