Paimpol - Fowey!

The weather forecast for the rest of the week slightly changed the plan.  We had hoped for another night in Paimpol and to go to the Tuesday market, but the strong winds forecast for Wednesday meant that we needed to leave or wait until the weekend.  After a whizz round town for necessary supplies (cowboy hat, saucisson and bottled water!) we set sail at around 4pm french time for a crossing from Paimpol to Fowey, where Dan and Jane are staying for the week. 

The forecast was for a force 3 Southwesterly which would have been great for our North Westerly course.  We initially set off motoring into a light NW wind which stayed with us until we had fully cleared the french coast.  This  gave way to a S/SE wind which was dead behind us - again  not ideal for our direction to Fowey.
So the whole passage was a combination of just about sailing the course and motoring -  it felt like we'd motored more than half the way but when Harry added up the engine hours it was only 8 hours.

I started off quite enjoying helming in the dark keeping an eye out for the lights of the ships but before too long the combination of the motion of the boat and the smell of diesel meant that I was ill on and off for quite a long time (and H was sick too).   Once morning came the weather was lovely and we also found that we could receive  radio 4 which perked me up significantly. It seemed to take an age before we could see the English coast, eventually sighting land when we were about 25 miles off.  By this time the wind enabled us to sail in at a respectable 6 knots.   Fowey is hard to spot from a long way out - but we could pick out Rame Head and Polperro and eventually came into the river.  Dan was there to meet us on the pontoon and couldn't believe we'd been sailing for 26 hours.

We moored the boat up on a pontoon at upriver Mixtow Pill so that it would be sheltered from the forecast incoming gale then, after showers and a very nice meal at Sam's Bistro, we both felt human again quite quickly.