Gwilym's Adventure Blog

This week I am on residential with Bridgwater College Outdoor Students at Glan Llyn centre near Bala. After and early start this morning and 6 hours on the road, we arrived for an afternoon of watersports. Whilst the students were out in canoes completing a water based orienteering course, I took the opportunity to have a paddle in a canoe, sail a cat (which I capsized for the first time in a long time) and spun round in the safety boat taking pictures.

Yesterday and today I was helping Carol and Debs with the final part of their yacht move. We took a leisurely 2 days heading west with a great evening meal and night on the pontoon in Salcombe having negotiated the surfers on Salcombe bar and watched the lifeboat go out. A lot of motor sailing required due to the wind but fantastic weather and the boat behaved very well. Sadly I am writing this on my phone on side of M5 waiting for AA due to a suspected coolant leak.

The journey continues....... After a weekend of wild weather where my diving and sailing trips were cancelled, this morning I joined up with Carol to continue moving her yacht round to its new home. We snatched a few hours of reasonable weather setting out from Brixham at 11:30 and motoring round to Dartmouth. As the castle came into sight, so did a massive squall that was brewing on the horizon. We held back to allow the tall ship to exit the harbour entrance and luck was on our side as we managed to get in and moored up before the rain started and we enjoyed lunch inside listening to the rain pounding on the cabin roof. Next instalment next week (fingers crossed)

Today I was back out with Carol and Debs sailing their yacht in the Torbay area. The plan is to get it moved round to Plymouth to the new mooring but a few technical issues and poor weather report for the next few days means is will be resting in Brixham until we get a chance to move it on. We had a mixture of weather today but if we ignore the rainy part just off Teignmouth then it was a pleasant sail and saw us arrive in Brixham Marina around 6:30pm. I felt a small pang of sadness as we passed my old yacht moored up in the harbour where her new owner keeps her but it was good to see her on the water. A great meal in the Breakwater Bistro finished off a nice day

This afternoon I helped a couple friends move their new yacht from Topsham down to Exmouth. It didn't quite go to plan as I had to sort out the engine cooling system on the way down the river that caused it to go dark on us before finding the mooring bouy. Anyway we found a bouy and are spending an unscheduled night on the yacht before trying to get ashore tomorrow morning on the early tide.

After spending 3 days last week sitting through Driver CPC - the most boring and pointless set of days I have ever done in my life (still got 2 more to do) it was great to be able to get out on the yacht today with Deb and Carol. Fantastic weather even if the wind was somewhat light.

Bye Dartmouth Castle  Start Point  The Mew Stone Fort Bovisand, almost home As I was not able to get to Salcombe yesterday I knew I had a long day ahead of me so started at 06:30 to catch the tide around Start Point. This all went very well averaging 6 knts from Dartmouth Castle to clearing Start. After that it was a relentless beat into the wind making about 1 mile in the direction I wanted for every 3 sailed. After a few hours of this I dropped sails and motored into the wind for a few hours on auto helm so I could take a break and have lunch. Then it was back to beating into the wind for the final leg up to the Yealm before I again succumbed and motored in arriving on my buoy at 17:00.  41 nautical miles done today so I am a bit tired. Over the last 14 days I have been living on the boat and managed 9 days sailing in various conditions (some less than comfortable), covered nearly 200 nautical miles, visited some nice harbours and generally...

Wet, windy, choppy and just horrible at times  Dartmouth Well, Plan A was to sail from Brixham to Salcombe today leaving me only a half day sail back to Torpoint tomorrow as I need to be packing to head north for some work.  Unfortunately I was fighting wind and tide for over 4 hours averaging just 2 knts just to get level with Dartmouth so rather than spend another 5 hours trying to push on to Salcombe I bailed into Dartmouth for the afternoon and will have a very early start tomorrow to try and get the tide round Start Point.

 Dartmouth Castle  Some Goose Wing downwind sailing  Berry Head Cruising into Anstey's Cove After breakfast on board at Dittisham, I headed east and rounded Berry Head before sailing over to one of my all time favourite play places, Anstey's Cove for lunch on anchor. I have now coasteered, climbed, dived, snorkelled, had a swim, kayaked and now sailed into Anstey's and I love it every time. After lunch I sailed over to Brixham and anchored in Churston/Fishcombe Cove for a cup of coffee before heading in Brixham Marina for a night with power and more importantly a shower.

Leaving Salcombe  Heading into Dartmouth Heading up river At Dittisham I left at 08:30 this morning to catch the tidal flow around Start Point and the plan was to have lunch in Dartmouth and push onto Brixham for the evening. What actually occurred was having entered Dartmouth at around 13:00 I headed up river to Dittisham for lunch. I then wandered up the hill to the shop which is pretty odd as basically the shop is the front room of the pub. I had heard about this but never been in there before. Then I couldn't really be bothered to go sailing again and chilled out on the yacht so will have another early start tomorrow to catch the tidal flow round Berry head.