We crossed over the English Channel a couple of times, back and forth to get used to some open sea sailing in winds in the high 20Knts. We tested out radar, became familiar with the TSS (traffic separation schemes) and how to negotiate large ships.
Once reasonably comfortable with Chloe's 'ways', we left France and the Schengen visa zone and headed over to the UK for to spend some time cruising West along the South coast. We had hoped to have enough time to get up to Scotland, but with the seasonal weather advised for crossing he Bay of Biscay, visa limitations and having spent too much time in Cherbourg, we re-tuned our plan to limit ourselves to the south coast of the UK only.
We were told not to try to cost the Bay of Biscay after August.
We crossed from the Channel Islands to Dartmouth and stated to cruise across the South coast, heading west.
We hit Dartmouth, Salcombe, the River Yealm and Plymouth before ending up in Falmouth.
Dartmouth was our favorite. It offered a great set of hikes plus a wonderful river boat trip up, and steam train ride down, the banks of the Dart. The round Robin trip.
Salcombe was too touristy and busy for our tastes. The water wasn't that clean as it does not come form a river and instead relied upon the wash of the tide alone to clean out the mooring field. But it was nice, or rather it could be nice, given a lot less boats.
While moored up in the area called 'the bag', a mil or so up river form Salcombe harbour, a dinghy race let loose zillion brightly colored min spinnaker sails, almost, but never actually, hitting us as we watched... quite the skies on show by those dinghy captains. Oddly silent though,.. no shouting, no commands just a quite flutter of dinghy sails.
We took our own little 9ft RIB out for a spin up the river o Kingshead. We used the e-propulsion electric outboard motor for the first time in anger. It performed very well indeed. Reliable, Silent and Easy. A good choice we feel. here are a few things we'd like to see improved - but over all it's a solid option.
The River Yealm was quite and pretty and we had chosen to park up fairly close to the mouth of the river in a reasonably isolated spot. It was pretty shallow and Chloe had to pull up her centerboard all the way so the we could moor up in 1.2m of running water. Great trees in Yealm.
Our last but one stop was Plymouth, where we met up with our Dutch friends and their gorgeous dog, Skip.
Plymouth is, how can we put it politely? .. 'not such a pretty place'. The English architecture is somewhat lacking..
Next Up.. We're heading to our Final English port: Falmouth...
