26th August 2012 Log 8744 Approx. Distance 38nm
Grit caught the train back to London on Saturday morning and Gudrun was coming down in the evening. It rained stair rods all day so I wasn’t missing out on anything. A few boaty jobs got done and then I donned full foul weather gear to meet Gudrun at the station. We had a meal in The Bridge restaurant in the marina which was good and had an early night. In the morning the rain had stopped and it was wall to wall sunshine. Amazingly, hardly any boats were stirring and we set off to the Plymouth breakwater without a yacht in sight. As usual my grib files looked good but the forecast was more threatening. We were heading for Salcombe originally but I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to get out if the weather closed in. So we sailed past Bolt Head with a pleasant F3 South wind by now accompanied by many other yachts. Start point was calm so we cut the corner through the tide rips. I took out the pole as we rounded up on a port tack for the entrance to Dartmouth. We dropped the main while there was plenty of sea room and continued under Yankee until the wind died in the shelter of the hills. It was about 1530 GMT. I radioed Dartnav on Channel 11 and the friendly staff allocated us a berth on a floating mid-stream pontoon. There are flukey currents in the Dart and we changed our approach to head east dispite the ebb tide. On springs this river can have quite a powerful stream. Once moored, Julie and Paul kayaked out to meet us. We showed them around the little ship and chatted about kayaking and life in general over a glass of wine in the cockpit. Later we mooched together around town and had a healthy meal in (I think) Taylors with some very vivid floral wallpaper. Later we parted, Gudrun and I got the River Taxi back to Sumara after a busy and very pleasant day. Log 8773
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