We are moored up in the Pendennis Marina in Falmouth. I spent Saturday evening updating this blog as to what we got up to on our rest day…. however it seems to have got lost in the ether of the internet and was never published. Never mind… with the great world web going wrong, the best therapy is to throw the device to the four winds…. then calm down and start again. So here goes…
A Saturday is usually laundry day…. and Mike, Christine and I spent much of Saturday occupying the two washing machines and two dryers of Pendennis Marina…. nobody else got a look in. The previous Saturday… at Portland Marina on a rest day, I had walked over 10,000 steps getting my washing done over about 10 hours. The Portland laundry room is adorned with many threats of keel hauling ( which if you know what it is, is very very unpleasant… a horrific and cruel punishment awarded to sailors of bygone days who crossed their Captain ). In Portland you get “keel hauled” if you abuse the machines… well you might feel like abusing the Portland machines… as there are no instructions as to how to use them… one machine is actually paid for with old one pound coins… but it doesn’t say that.
Pendennis laundry actually had instructions…. but oh so so long in terms of waiting time…. and the driers whilst working, did not dry efficiently… so much so that on arrival in Newlyn at Lands End, Mike and Christine had to walk to Penzance with a big heavy bag of damp Falmouth laundry…. to dry in a local laundrette. One bonus was… they got to go to the pub!
Any way….. enough of washing dirty sailing clothes. On this rest day Poli Poli had honoured visitors from way back in the past….Liz and Brian Terry… retired teachers from a bygone age… I taught with Liz in the very strange Northamptonshire town of Corby… a unique Scottish enclave set in the country side with an umbilical chord of a weekend coach linking it to Glasgow and back. Toilet graffiti was more about the Pope and the Red Hand of Ulster.
I had last met Liz and Brian in the early 1990’s when Liz was Head of a school in Brigg, Lincolnshire and Brian a senior teacher in the city of Hull.
Anyway Liz and Brian spent some time looking over Poli Poli, a jolly decent Spanish lunch was had…. washed down with Cornish lager, a walk through the high street of Falmouth ( M & S being closed down )…. and a long sit down on the pier watching the local youngsters diving and swimming below us… kids now swim in wet suits these days. It was a “cossie” in my day!
Meanwhile Mike and Christine… also did the walk with additional visits to the laundry room in between… and an afternoon visit to the National Maritime Museum in Pendennis, Falmouth. Here they viewed a special exhibition on the theme of the Titanic disaster in 1912.
Come 6pm the day was done and we retired to the boat… it had been a lovely day weather wise… the second best in 13 days along the south coast of England… the other being the rest day in Dartmouth. It was scorther Saturday… high preesure still dictating relatively calm and settled conditions. There was wind in the morning but by pm we were back to the doldrums type conditions… flat calm and a glassy sea.
After writing out a passage plan for Falmouth to Penzance, we retired to bed at 10.30pm… rest day over. The plan was to depart at 8am the next morning…. so a not too early start to sail the 35 or so nautical miles round the famous Lizard to Penzance.
Toby's sailing boat Poli Poli 