Pwllheli - Padstow

One thing that happened whilst we were painting the bottom of the boat I forgot to mention was – we had told the girls under no uncertain terms not to use the toilet, every time they needed I would take them over to the marina office...... Ali and I were happily painting towards each other down the Port side of the boat when suddenly a shower of pee shot out of the side of the boat missing both of us by only a few feet! Kaylee had decided as usual to do the opposite of what she was told, peerie monkey. She got a good telling off which only served to encourage her more so she started filling the sinks then pulling out the plugs and all you could hear was laughing from inside the boat as water splattered all over the ground. We had to give her more trouble and she stopped but I can tell you that both Ali and I spent as little time as possible painting below the toilet outlet!

Thurs 2^nd Leaving Pwllheli

We set off at 5 am to catch the tide down the coast for a bit and negotiated our way out of the tricky entrance again. Phew! We weren’t sure how far we were going to go maybe Milford Haven or Falmouth or somewhere in between! We had looked at a lot of the charts and decided just to see what happened. The forecast was for a lot of rain and thunder storms and typically I had been listening to the radio just the day before and they were having a phone in about what you should do in a lightning storm – one caller asked about boats and he got the reply that it was especially bad for fibreglass bottomed boats as it could just shoot straight through!. This made me keep a very keen eye on the clouds all day! There was no thunder but there was some very heavy rain for a while. The wind was playing around for the first part of the day, it would be coming directly from the East then it would swing right round to the West then die away then rise again so the jib was in and out and in and out the girls decided whilst I was on watch to try and help me put the jib away as they love playing with the winches. We lost a lot of speed going against the tide for a while which was a shame I went for a sleep about teatime and when I got up a couple of hours later we were only about 6 miles further, that is very demoralising! We decided when the wind picked up after tea not to go into Milford Haven and to carry on all the way to Falmouth overnight. I did the first shift untli midnight and Ali did the dark bit.

When I was on watch at night we were joined by a pod of dolphins that swam with us for about half an hour the girls were still up and were delighted to see the dolphins ‘play’ with the boat. You can just see one of them in the photo as usual the experience does not transfer to the badly taken photo!

We passed a few ferries and fishing boats and a lot of tankers at anchor outside Milford Haven Ali couldn’t figure out what one boat was in the night until he got close enough to see that it was an aircraft carrier looming up at him. Ali and I had had a discussion about which lights we should display whilst motor sailing at night, I got my Yachtmaster book out to confirm that I was right!

Thankfully the auto pilot whilst not perfect was working far better than it had been before meaning you could leave the deck for a couple of minutes to make a cuppa or look at the chart which you couldn’t have done last week. We did however discover that the radar completely knocks out the autopilot compass as I put it on when we were in the heavy rain and immediately it all started going wrong.

Friday 3^rd Padstow

When I came on my watch again at about 4.30am we hadn't made much headway and to get around Land's End was going to mean a lot of tacking and at least 12hours sailing so we decided to head for Padstow instead which would only take a few hours and Ali could get some sleep.

We got to Padstow at about eight in the morning but the lock gates only open at High Water +/- 2 hrs so we anchored in a bay just along the coast. It was lovely warm and sunny so we dozed on deck until time to go around to the harbour.

When we were going around the headland enroute to Padstow we saw a little shark swimming around that is the first time Kaylee and I have seen a shark. Kaylee was very excited. Alisha was sleeping - typical. The coastline around Padstow is very rugged, very pretty.

The entrance to Padstow is basically a beach when the tide goes out with a few pools in the channel. The fishing boats were all heading back in as were some yachts and then the boats already in the harbour were all streaming out with windsurfers whizzing about too - very busy! We made it in and had to quickly lift fenders etc as it is a walled harbour not a marina like we thought (as it is called a marina in the Almanac.) We were directed to tie up to a boat which had been anchored next to us in the bay. The crew of this boat ‘Alixora’ turned out to be doing the same as us i.e. renting out their house and sailing to warmer climes! They have a blog too http://www.sailers.co.uk/index.php/rosie-a-brian it is very interesting to see what others are going through too!

Padstow Harbour is quite like the small boat harbour before there were pontoons. The only difference being the amount of people milling around. At night the pubs let people take their drinks out and sit on the harbour wall (weather permitting!) so we have been surrounded by people - it is a little like being an animal in the zoo! It is a very nice place though, Rick Stein seems to own a fair sized chunk he has two restaurants, a cafe, a deli and a fish shop! I have been working on a certain someone to see if we could go for a meal in the restaurant or the cafe but seeing as a fish supper from his chip shop costs - wait for it.........£7.50 I don’t think I will be getting to even look at the menu! We did buy some fish from his shop and made a curry. Personally I think you can get as good (if not better) from the Blydoit fish shop. The fish shop was worth a visit to see the live shellfish! The girls loved the live lobsters and crabs.

We went to the lobster hatchery which was very good, there were lots of things to look at. The baby lobsters are cute. They have released fifty thousand juveniles into the wild since 2002 which is quite impressive for a charitably funded outfit. The NAFC at home used to do the same work I don’t know if they still do.

Each night the harbour got suddenly very noisy and reeky with old steam engines. There is a vintage rally on just outside town and some of the owners have been coming down for a run to get a fish supper. The whole harbour filled with reek on the Saturday night as it was so calm. This made us decide to catch the bus out there on Sunday. I must admit I wasn’t brimming with enthusiasm but it was great. There was every kind of vintage engine you could imagine, tractors, vans, cars, motorbikes, traction engines, steam engines large and small. There were different shows every half hour e.g. wood cutting demos, dancing diggers etc. There were food stalls selling pasties and strawberries and cream, beer stalls selling nettle beer, apple ‘whisky and of course cider,’ lots of ‘foodie’ stalls selling local chutneys honey and the like. There were model railways and huge meccano diggers. There was a mini fair made from kinnex which had a sign saying do not touch so Kaylee stuck her head in one and made it stop working. It was a really good day out and if you are ever in the area another year when it is on we highly recommend it.

Ali has had the girls out for a walk tonight and he just can’t get away with anything. As soon as they got back Alisha informed me that he had had two beers in the pub next to the play park and he had told them not to tell mum!

Monday 6^th Kaylee’s birthday

It was a really wet day and so we decided to go to Newquay to a waterworld. It was a hell of a bus ride as it goes in and out of all the little villages along the coast between Padstow and Newquay on mainly single roads with passing places and really high hedges so that you cannot see what’s coming, a bit scary!

The pool was really good and thankfully the flumes were not too crazy since I have to go down them with one child! The zoo was on the way out of the pool and after a lot of pleading we went there too. It is an OK zoo but a fair few animals seemed to be hiding! The poor lioness looked really bored in her cage. The lasses fairly liked it and we got to see the penguins being fed which turned out to be huge fight with the scories to get the fish! I forgot to take my camera so no pics of Kaylee's birthday - oops.

We decided to have tea in Newquay as it would have been an hour and a half before we got back to Padstow . We had a bowl of pasta each which was very good but turned out to be very expensive as we had read the bus timetable wrongly and missed the last one home! The crew of the outside boat in our ‘yacht sandwich’ came aboard for a coffee which was nice. Rafting up is definitely more sociable than pontoons!

Tues 7^th Padstow

Stayed in Padstow waiting for the wind to ease/turn! It was a sunny day although still fairly breezy. We got the bikes out and went for a cycle along the ‘Camel Way’ It is a path that was made over the disused railway lines between Padstow and Wadeford. It is very pretty and very busy! It follows the banks of the river estuary. When we went it was low tide and it is quite amazing just how far the tide goes out. It looks just like a big beach but gets completely covered at high tide. Kaylee and I witnessed a lady being attacked by a scorie for her Rick Stein fish supper on the way back, Kaylee has had a much more healthy respect for seagulls ever since instead of chasing them around.

In the afternoon we went up to Tesco’s to get supplies for the next day’s sailing. We invited Brian and Rosemary from the inner yacht in the sandwich aboard for a few beers so we could compare notes on where we were all planning to go when we crossed the channel. They are giong to the Scillies then to Brest, we are hoping to go to Falmouth tomorrow then over to l'aber wrach after we have had the bimini fitted, autopilot hopefully fixed and nipped over to Sussex to see 'Grandma England' Hopefully we will cross paths again on our way to the Med and we wish them good luck and fair winds on their travels.