Wednesday 17th June 2015

The day starts early - 5:30am - the fishing trawlers start their engines and are manoeuvring their way out of the harbour by 6:00am. The tide gate is opened at 5:30am and will remain open until 7:45am. As we are awake we prepare to leave and follow them out.

It's foggy but the river is easily navigable due to the buoys, but we can only see one set at a time. When we get to the river entrance the wind and waves increase and we are sent running for the slightly calmer water behind Steppa Point so that we can move the dinghy to a more sailing-friendly position behind the helm.

Looking out to sea from the Camel Estuary

Looking backwards to Padstow

The fog is getting thicker, what are we doing!!!

Now the visibility has dropped to a few hundred metres, playing havoc with our sense of direction. Time to put all your trust in the instruments again. One of the problems with fog is that you can't judge distance travelled very easily and, not being able to see, limits your ability to see fishing pots which we really need to avoid. We know the river entrance is littered with them and some are very tricky to see unless you are right on top of them.

We leave the safety of the land and head out into the open sea. The winds which have been blowing for the last couple of days have whipped up the sea and the south westerly has given us some impressive swell. We pressed on knowing that Lundy was only 40 miles or 7 hours away. The tide gate was now closed so our only other option was to head back to Steppa Point and anchor up but we already knew that would be pretty uncomfortable.

We were accompanied most of the way by dolphins, some pods staying with us for well over an hour. I tried to get some video but its very difficult to catch them just as they jump.

The day seemed never ending but in the end we watched Lundy getting closer and closer on the radar. Navigating by radar - umm not sure that's in the text books!!

Closer to Lundy and the swell, which had been bearable all day suddenly started to get bigger, We had to change direction to avoid the race and get into the calmer water of the landing bay. The waves were now making it difficult to move around the boat.

Finally we were in calmer water and anchored for the night. It was then that we discovered we had run out of fresh water. The faulty water tank gauge was still reading half a tank, so we hadn't bothered filling up in Padstow. We won't do that again.

Going to have to hit the gin tonight as a cup of tea is out of the question now.