Gosport to Falmouth

Hi everyone.

We're now relaxing on the Truro River upstream from Falmouth.  Lovely quiet spot.  We arrived yesterday at sunset after a 150nm passage from Newtown Creek on the Isle of Wight.  Last night we anchored near New Zealand yacht Cerulean and joined them for lunch today.

Chillin' on the Truro River

We timed our departure from Gosport to take advantage of forecast NE winds.  Here's the forecast from PredictWind...

Weather Forecast

We'd been at Gosport Premier Marina for just over a year.  We arrived just before the first Covid-19 lockdown and departed after the third lockdown.  Nice marina with very friendly helpful staff.  Happily we did manage to visit the main Gosport museums during the Autumn easing of restrictions.  Unhappily there are many Gosport pubs we didn't get to visit.

Ready to depart Gosport Premier Marina

Heading out!

A last look at Spinnaker Tower

A few weeks before departing Gosport we met the South African crew of UK yacht Sea Walk.  They're beginning their cruising adventures.  It was fun chatting with them about bluewater cruising.  They decided to accompany us to Newtown Creek.

Sailing with UK yacht Sea Walk

We had a very nice sail beating west from Gosport to Newtown Creek on Friday.  On entering the creek Australian yacht Blue Heeler called us on VHF - they were also in the anchorage.  They had wintered in Southsea Marina and we'd met with them a couple of times when Covid rules permitted.  We first met them in 2012 in Indonesia.  We motored over to say 'hi'.

We had quiet night in Newtown Creek with a brief sundowner with the Sea Walkers.  On Saturday morning we departed the creek in company with Blue Heeler.  They were sailing to Lulworth Cove.

Australian yacht Blue Heeler

Here's our track to Falmouth...

Zen Again Track

And here are the usual stats...

• Distances/Speeds
• Route Distance = 150nm
• Log Distance = 135nm (the log is under-reading!)
• GPS Distance = 162nm
• Duration = 34h
• Average Ground Speed = 4.8 knots
• Weather
• Minimum Wind Speed = 5 knots
• Maximum Wind Speed = 30 knots
• Apparent Wind Angle Range = 50 to 180 degrees
• Seas up to 1.5m
• Cold with occasion sunny spells and a set of thunderstorms
• Engine
• Total = 5 hours
• Driving = 5 hours

And here are the plots, created from our NMEA-2000 network using SignalK, InfluxDB and Grafana...

Passage Plots

The speed plot shows the tide swinging to and fro.  It was with us from the Isle of Wight to Portland Bill and we sailed in a 10-15 knot NE breeze.  The breeze eased to 5-10 knots as we approached Portland.  With the tide now against us we slowed down and had to gybe south.

During the voyage we noticed the heading data from our Airmar 220WX was misbehaving.  It appeared to be sensitive to roll angle which is unexpected for a unit built for use on boats.  Looking into that.  

Overall we love the Airmar.  It's the first time we've had reliable wind data.  It has shown we were not bad at estimating true wind speed.  It's also interesting seeing the 3 to 5 degree nose down pitch while sailing.  The sailing force is of course applied above the centre of mass so that's exactly what to expect!

Blue Heeler departing Newtown Creek

Passing the Needles

Off Portland Bill in the early evening we had thunderstorms around us.  One of them had impressive lightning and thunder.  We gybed to and fro to keep out of their way.  Eventually the wind settled back in the NE and we headed west across Lyme Bay.  The sky cleared and for several hours we sailed under the stars.  And it was cold - down to 2C.  We were dressed in thermals, thick onesie, jumper, water proofs, gloves, hat, snood and ugg boots.

Very cold Sunday dawn

Sunshine but still cold!

On Sunday morning the wind backed from NE to N.  This gave us more apparent wind which helped us along nicely.  By midday the wind had died entirely so we motored for an hour.  After a lot of cloudy weather the batteries needed a charge anyway.  After the hour motoring a new N breeze came in but it was unreliable until mid-afternoon so the engine came on again for a while.

The forecast on VHF indicated a strong wind warning was current.  We altered course NW to go around Eddystone Rock which gave us a better angle to Falmouth in the predicted NW wind.  After we passed the Rock the new NNW wind came in, gusting up to 35 knots.

Eddystone Rock

Chilly Admiral

When using the motor earlier in the day we'd found it was sometimes failing to pump raw water through on startup.  It was due to an airlock forming in the hose between inlet and impeller pump.  So as we approached Falmouth we were careful to give ourselves time to deal with the problem recurring.  We knew we'd need the engine to punch north up the Fal River into 20+ knots of N wind.

The problem did recur so we had to detach the hose, top it up with water and re-attach it.  That worked a treat but the airlock shouldn't be happening.  Looking into how it is happening.  With the engine running we were able to motor up the Fal to the Truro River with the wind gradually dying.

Up the Fal to the Truro River

Overall our two passages to Falmouth were excellent shakedowns.  We've done a lot of work on the boat since last summer so it was good to test everything before heading off across the Bay of Biscay.

Today we've changed our engine raw water inlet back to a direct hose from inlet to impeller pump.  That should eliminate the air lock problem.  We need to clean our log impeller to get proper boat speed data.  We'll look into the 220WX heading problem.  And we need to make some changes to our electrical connections to simplify navigation and communication on our Macbooks and iPads.

Trust all's well where you are!