Weather, damned weather!

Late Sunday night Ivor and Marina, the remaining members of our Biscay crew, arrived in Falmouth by train having travelled from Madrid the same day, via London, Plymouth and Truro. Original plan was to set sail for Spain on Monday morning but - you guessed it - the forecast was highly unfavourable for our first crossing of the bay of Biscay. Falmouth is all very well but not when you want to be on your way to Spain. There can only be so many Cornish pasties one can eat, not to mention Cornish ice creams; all so delicious but thoughts had already turned towards tapas. Even the enormous French cruise ship which popped in for a couple of nights could not divert us for long,

nor did the cuttle fish which appeared in the water by our berth.

We needed to leave for Spain by Wednesday morning at the latest for the 500 mile passage across Biscay, in order for the crew safely to catch their flights back to UK. Weather wasn't cooperating (again) so rather than allow barnacles to grow on the hull, and to ensure our crew had some sailing at least, we fixed on a plan to sail to the Scillies instead, returning to the mainland by the weekend. Although the winds were strong, all was going swimmingly, as shown below,

until a gale warning for our part of the coast came in on our Navtex receiver. Welł the Scillies are not the place you want to be when there is a gale blowing ... absolutely no shelter. A couple of homing pigeons on their way from France (we think) hitched a ride with us. Poor things were exhausted by the head wind they had had to battle against.

By this time we had sailed past the Lizard but luckily not got as far as Lands End. So Plan B came into play and we diverted into Mounts Bay where the safe harbour of Newlyn awaited us.

 Stuck again to await the gale, our compensation was a lobster dinner cooked on board.

They were enormous and delicious! The gale came through during the night and the next morning we witnessed a yacht about the same size as Follyfin being rescued by the local lifeboat.

Very pleased that wasn't us! With the week nearly over, and the Biscay passage definitely off, Friday saw Follyfin headed back east to deliver her crew back to Plymouth from where they could all catch trains back home. The first part of this 70 mile passage, back round the Lizard, was done in fog with little or no wind. Off-watch activities varied:

Whilst those on watch were hard at work using radar and AIS to spot and avoid other vessels.

The wind was too variable to allow us to sail for the first 10 hours of the passage but in the final 4 hours the visibility improved and we had a steady force 4 tail wind, allowing us to 'gull-wing' our sails and test out all the recently fitted equipment. That at least was a success. The rest of the week proved to be a huge disappointment for our faithful crew and us as we had all planned to be in Spain by now! The weather has now settled and this coming week looks perfect for the Biscay crossing. Only problem is that we are now without a crew. Fingers crossed we can find someone else to help us across. With luck, the next post will be written from Spain.