Day 29 - Thursday 10th July
So this is it - the final entry - the last leg of the voyage of the Wild Rover. After such an epic three day battle to get to Ramsgate, and with Derek leaving, it would have been very easy to have decided to stop and draw breath for 24 hours. But we are made of sterner stuff than that, and gave Alan a call to see if he fancied helping us do the last bit. As luck would have it, he did - even after all the experiences of the Irish Sea, he was still willing to get back on the boat. That says something about the man's character.
Dave and I managed to get a couple of hours kip, but once Alan was with us, all that needed to be done was to buy a couple of pints of milk (you can sail,a yacht without diesel, but not without tea) and we were off again. The european water ski racing championships were underway as we left - blokes being pulled at very high speeds round a triangular course over realy pretty rough water. Very impressive to watch, although you do wonder how many of them will be able to walk past the age of 45, when their backs, kness, hips, ankles etc are all shot to pieces with arthritis. We also watched one of the skiers being copiously sick into the marina after being brought in. It may be a quick way of travelling, but frankly I prefer my boat.
The wind helped us as far as Westgate, but it was still very much a SW breeze, that picked up and picked up and picked up. We had to motor sail the entire length of from Margate to Chatham, and when we could bear off even slightly we were doing well over 7 knots. But as we got into the mouth of the Medway, we encountered some of the most difficuly wave conditions in the whole trip. Fair enough they weren't big waves, but they were at an awkward length for the Wild rover to really cope with - and they just kept slamming over the top in a wind that we reckon wasn't far off a force 8. Fortunately the sun was shining and the water was warm, so it was quite amusing in a way - but we couldn't have got any wetter if we'd been stood in the practise yard at Gillingham fire station while the crews tested out a new water pump on us. But with the tide under us, we made good time nonetheless, and having called ahead to Gem, and a couple of other people, we reached the marina at 10 past 6 in the evening. It was a fantastic, emotional homecoming. Charlie and Grace and Gem running down the pontoon to meet me, people from LRF, friends, wellwishers, Graham Clarke playing The Wild Rover on his squeezebox - it was absolutely great.
All the way round the boat has performed excellently - I can't speak highly enough of Wild Rover as a yacht - dry, weatherly, comfortable, and given the right conditions, fast. The designer David Sadler is a very clever chap. I also have to say that the Raymarine chartplotter was worth its weight in gold, with the Navionics mapping holding such an extraordinary quantity of detail that it made piloting in to even tricky harbours like Padstow very very straightforward. If anyone is umming and erring over whether to have an AIS receiver on their plotter, and you are going to be doing longer hops, over to France etc - then stop thinking about it and just do it. It's like radar that actually tells you the name and speed and drection of the ship - even where it is going, and its MMSI number. It's a bloody marvel.
Finally, lets not forget what this trip has been about all along. While I have enjoyed the sailing of it, even the horrible bits in a funny kind of way, at the back of it all is the motivation to raise money for leukaemia research. I was affected by the death of Jessie Whitmore, and her tragedy prompted me to want to do something. Every day families have to cope with the trauma of a loved one being diagnosed with blood cancer - and the good news is that these days they will have an 80% chance of going into remission. But there are still far too many who don't make it - or who are killed by the chemotherapy. The research is really making a difference, and in 20 years time I'm absolutely confident that they will have worked out the genetic/DNA causes of leukaemia - and that that will provide the key to stopping ALL cancers. The value of the research can hardly be overstated, and I am very very proud to have been able to help raise some cash, and the profile of the organisation into the bargain.
Over 1,500 miles sailed in a complete circle from Chatham to Chatham, via Sunderland, Newcastle, Eyemouth, Stonehaven, Peterhead, Portsoy, Inverness, Corpach, Oban, Bangor, Porth Dinllein, Milford Haven, Padstow, and Ramsgate. Its been a wonderful experience, and I am happy and priviledged to to able to say that I voyaged right round Britain on the Wild Rover.
Day 26 - Monday 7th July
I know it sounds implausible, but it has been really frustrating to have to spend a whole weekend in a lovely little village with a nice pub, with decent beer, and Wimbledon and the grandprix on the telly, and no other distratcions to worry about. But absurdly enough, it was frustrating. I have been itching to get home for a while now, and having to wait for another spell has been a royal pain in the proverbial. We did think about leaving on Sunday evening, but after chatting with a couple of chaps in the pub who were also planning to go south, and who shook their heads and sucked their teeth in a very knowing manner and told us that they wouldn't this evening under any circumstances, not if they were us. And the longer we listened to them, the more beer went down, and soon enough leaving wasn't really a clever option anyway. For the record, I liked Padstow, but I didn't have any fish in any of Rick Steins establishments. I did have a chinese on my own on the friday night (Chicken chow mein, £4, on the boat) and then a steak on saturday night with Dave - who had flown down from Stansted to Newquay despite hating everything to do with air travel, because he is such a great bloke. And on Sunday once Derek had joined us and it had become apparant that we weren't going to leave we ate in the pub again, and this time I had pasta. I've eaten a lot of pasta over the last few weeks. I may end up writing a treatise on the differing qualities of pasta available to the itinerant yachtsman.
Anyway, come the morning we decided enough was enough and to end all the fannying about and to get on with it. Checking the weather reports further would only give us further excuses and reasons to delay, and we'd already decided that it was probably going to be bloody hard work until Lands End, but that we would at least get the wind behind us after that, so come 9am, we left anyway.
Dave started cooking sausages as we left the Camel's mouth ( which really does sound odd, doesn't it, but if they will name their river the Camel...) which was probably a bit of a mistake, because there were some really serious waves going on out there. There had been stuff in the papers over the last week about the Cribbar in newquay, a reef that throws up gigantic 25 foot waves every bluemoon or so, and how some lunatic teenagers had been riding this wave known as "The Widowmaker". We were sailing out into the same swell that had been making those waves. Seiously bouncy, erratic, and unpleasant. While he wasn't actully ill, and he did actually produce the sausage sandwiches, Dave did have to retire to his bunk for a spell to get over the effect. We elected to head out a bit further to see if being in any deeper water would reduce the steepness of the waves, and it did seem to have some effect - it was far less horrible with 30m under the keel than 20. But it was still a long long way to go to get to Land End. We had the tide under us for the start, and the hope was to get round before it turned at around 4. This proved to be a vain hope, because the wind was resolutely SW, and on the nose (how often has that been a refrain on this trip) and having to smash through the chop slowed us down considerably. It meant of course that we reached the crucial tidal gate at just the wrong moment and had to work bloody hard to make any progress at all. In fact it wasn't until eight o'clock in the evening that we finally managed to get round Longships, bear off and actually get pushed along by the wind rather than battle into it.
And what a difference it made - all of a sudden the noise halves, the motion of the boat calms, and the speed over the ground doubles. It's like driving a car and being really unsatisfied with its general performance, it just won't go as it should despite all the coaxing and wheedling you can think of. And then suddenly you realise that the choke was out amd the handbrake was on, and you sort those out and whoosh, you're off. As different a feeling as day and night. Then of course, since it was eight o'clock in the evening, day did soon become night, and we had to cope with all that that brings as well, but at least we were moving properly at last.
Day 27 Tuesday 8th July
We passed the Lizard around midnight, having to keep an extra eye out for a variety of military craft that were on some sort of exercise, and that don't show up with the AIS warning system. We even were buzzed by a low flying chopper at one point. Fortunately no friendly fire incidents occured. The weather was ordinary windy, which is to say not really sunny, about 5/6, but not dreadful either. Since we were broad reaching along we felt pretty relaxed about everything, and made good progress - passing the Eddystone Lighthouse at midday, which Dave almost took a photo of, but not quite. He has a gift, almost a genius for things mechanical. But not for taking pictures.
As the afternoon turned into evening the weather started to close in - forcing another reef into the main and a shortening of the genoa - but it was still very managable, so we managed. The overnight sleeping patterns were a bit random, and eveyone was getting pretty tired, but having said that the boat continued to fly along - we passed Start Point with the tide in our favour for instance, one of the few occasions that we actually managed to get a tidal gate to work in out favour, and by darkness the lights of the Isle of Wight were in sight.
The AIS showed up dozens of tankers lying in the lee of the Island, and we had a bit of a start when the high spped ferry came shooting out of the Solent at high speed ( I suppose that is only to be expected) and passed to our stern by half a mile or so. That sounds a long way, but we had no idea it was coming out of the murk and the mizzle, and if we had been in its path, I dread to think how many seconds we would have had to react from the point of first spotting it. You can only hope that doing that kind of run they are keeping a good lookout on board.
Day 28 - Wednesday 9th July
Fantastic progress continuing, past Selsey Bill in daylight with the prospect of reaching Brighton in the mid afternoon. Derek wants to be at Heathrow for Thursday afternoon to send his daughter Clare off on a two year trip to Hong Kong as a nanny. Clare is the real reason why Derek is involved with the trip - she had leukaemia as a child, and Derek has been involved with raising money for Leukaemia Research ever since. We filmed at Derriford Hopital on Friday, and met one of the consultants that had helped to save her life 27 years ago, which was really quite a poignant moment. So, it's only fair that he should get the chance to say goodbye to her before she disappears from this hemisphere for a couple of years. However, since the boat was making such great progress, we had a bit of a debate as to where would be best to stop. If we reached Brighton by 4ish say, wouldn't we be as well to push on to Eastbourne and get round Beachy Head, the next major tidal gate as well? And if we got that far by early evening, then we might be able to actually get as far as Ramsgate by the early hours, and Derek would still be able to make it to the airport in time.
Well, amazingly, it all came to pass - despite concerns over the possibility of an approaching weather front, we kept on flying, and with the tide in our favour moving at 6.5 7 knots for much of the time. We reached Brighton ahead of our guesstimate, and Eastbourne likewise, so the only sensible thing to do was keep going while we had the wind in out favour. As we followed the coast up past Dungeness the wind started to pick up again, and at 2am we had to cope with a rather nasty squall that threw down blinding torrents of rain for a short period, and made is necessary, but very difficult to reef in the genoa. But once that had blown through and daylight returned, we found we were still making great progress for Ramsgate. Passing Dover was nervy, simply because of the need to ferry dodge, but we managed to time it well enough to just keep going and not have to take any avoiding action. Then up alongside Deal and through the Downs in behind the Goodwin Sands. At last the big awkward swell was a little dampened and we could actually make a bit of hot soup to keep going. We did have to wait off the mouth of Ramsgate harbour for 40 minutes or so while a ferry left and another came in - and with 3.5 knots of tide ripping past, just holding station out of the shipping lane was something of a trial in its self. But we got in at 5am - a non-stop passage from Padstow to Ramsgate in 69 hours. I don't care what kind of yacht you're sailing, for a three man crew to cover 380 miles, negotiating half a dozen notorius tidal races, and the busiest shipping lanes in the world in less than three days is bloody marvellous. I have nothing but praise for Dave and Derek for the way they kept going, despite the fact it was often little more than an endurance test in the wet and the dark. All-in-all, a performace to be genuinely proud of.
Day 22 - Thursday 3rd July
At last, at long long last, we have had a great, truly memorable sailing day. We motored out of Milford Haven, having spent what seemed like an age in the sealock, and into the mounting swell with some trepidation. After the bad weather of the last few days and the angst of the afternoon and night before knowing we weren't going to make it round the Lizard by friday, we were I think all a bit concerned that this would be another difficult day.
Not a bit of it. The sun shone benevolently from a blue sky with interestingly shaped clouds (especially the ones that Alan saw, and frequently remarked upon - "Look, its a dragon, with steam coming out of its mouth...) while the breeze brew steadily and firmly from the west at a force 4/5. The boat was happy to set a direct course for Padstow, due south, just off a close reach. Even with a reefed main and genny, she still skipped along between five and a half and six knots, and the clear blue water sparkled in rising sheets from the bow.
Suddenly it was all easy - this was what the sail was supposed to be like - time to let Bunty do her share of the steering (Bunty being the the charming steadfast autopilot - not a great looker, but a thoroughly reliable old brick) and for us to sit back and enjoy the ride. If we had had half a dozen days like this, we would have been four hundred miles further ahead by now.
And then came the dolphins - pod after pod, in groups of five or six, swimming in pairs, or a couple with a baby, twisting and turning right next to the cockpit and jumping through the bow wave. At times they seemed so close that you could touch them with your hand. They would disappear off at a right angle from the boat, and after a glimpse of fin 50 yards away within moments a bluegrey streakwould shoot right under the rudder and then surface with a breath and a click and a whistle on the other side. The keel and rudder seem to be particularly fascinating for them, and you wonder if they see the underside of a yacht as some great lumbering whale that is swimming resolutely on its side, and they want to help it roll over properly. Quite marvellous, magical moments that leave you with a foolish grin for a full half hour afterwards.
And with the steady wind urging us on, we had covered the 80 or so miles to Padstow by 10 o'clock, and picked up a mooring just as the last of the daylight ebbed away with the tide in the River Camel. (Seriously, Padstow is on the River Camel.) It was a great day, and a fitting end of the run for Steve and Alan to enjoy, and which allowed us all to say goodbye on a high.
www.justgiving.com/sailroundbritain
Day 23 - Friday 4th July
So, now I have met Derek face to face - Derek Prickett will be sailing with us for the next few days, as will Dave Selby my father in law, which is great. After having had numerous conversations with Derek over the phone in the last few months, it was good to meet him, and find he really does have a silly sense of humour and a ready laugh. And its terrific Dave will be able to come on the boat for a spell as well. No one has done more to make this whole project possible, and it really is only right that he should get to enjoy some of the sailing as well.
I spent the afternoon filming at Derriford hospital in Plymouth, because there is a heavy gale blowing in overnight and tomorrow that will make it dangerous to attempt to sail round Lands End at the moment. So I met a couple of the nurses on the childrens ward, and a consultant oncologist who, it turns out by an almost fantastic coincidence, actually treated Dereks daughter Clare when she had leukaemia 27 years ago. It was quite touching to see him have a conversation with a woman that he had helped save the life of all those years ago. Thats what his job is all about - and why we're raising money for research into preventing more people dieing from the disease.
So, now the hope is that we will be able to set off on the high tide on sunday evening, and once round the lizard, it will be westerlies to take us swiftly all the way home. If the wind manages to conjure up an easterly at that point, I will know once and for all that there is a God out there, and he's taking the p***. ;-)
