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| St Anthony Head lighthouse revealed |
The log flicks between seven and a half and eight knots.
Stargazer is broad reaching with a quartering swell and eighteen to twenty
knots of apparent wind. She swoops and soars effortlessly over the undulating
seascape. The indigo blue surface of the water is marbled with white crests. It
has a long rhythmic heave as if the muscles of a leviathan are at work below
the blue skin of the surface; propelling it purposefully in towards the land.
On our starboard bow the outstretched green arm of St Anthony Head reaches out
to greet us. As we draw nearer and further south, the lighthouse is slowly
revealed. First the light peeps over the top of the arm. Then, as we bring the
headland abeam, the squat white tower is revealed gleaming brightly in the
afternoon sun.
We’re inside the protecting arm of the headland. The swell
has flattened. Our speed is now a tide assisted eight knots. Carrick Roads has
shrunk! Whether this is a product of our speed or a trick of fifteen year old
memories (from two happy summers spent pottering around the Fal aboard a
borrowed Shrimper) I do not have time to reflect. Black Rock has shot by to
port closely followed by St Mawes Castle to Starboard. A coaster is emerging
from the docks and will be swinging east towards us shortly. I furl the jib.
Forward visibility improves, our speed drops to five knots and a sense of calm
descends. I drink in the view far down Carrick Roads: Low rolling green
hillsides to either hand; The inviting inlets of St Just, Mylor and
Restronguet; A broad expanse of water dotted with sails of every shape size and
colour imaginable.
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| Stargazer alongside Falmouth Quay |
I harden up round the stern of the coaster and reach in
towards the docks. Ahead a saucer hulled, monofilm sailed, skiff planes
upriver. Then she’s over. The helmsman steps nimbly over the gunwhale to stand
dry footed on the centreboard and scoops his crew up as he rolls the boat back upright.
He’s too quick to climb back in though and she’s over again to windward. I gybe
round and circle as the two young crew wrestle their flying machine upright. A
wave and they’re off again. We chase the gusts upriver too. I drop the main up
by the Maritime Museum and motor over to Falmouth Quay visitors’ pontoon. It’s
nicely empty of boats but has two helpful people stood on it. They walk over to
take Stargazer’s lines and to chat about where we’re in from and where we’re
heading.
The forecast is giving gale warnings, from the south west
swinging round through west to northwest, for the next three to four days. I
provision up with fresh bread, salad, fruit and water; stay the night to give
Stargazer’s batteries a good charge on shore power; and then head up river to
find a sheltered anchorage.
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| Eve of St Mawes - locally built and sailed |
The channel writhes down Carrick Roads towards Turnaware
Point like a serpent. My eyes flick from chart plotter, to sketch map, to
buoyage, to depth gauge and then up to the telltales on Stargazer’s sails. I’m
keeping the port hand mark off St Just on the windward shrouds. As we harden up
for the starboard mark I lay the luff on a gnarled solitary black tree on
Messack Point. The instant that I see that tree on the point round the luff of
the jib my memory flashes back to the Shrimper fifteen years ago. It’s my first
voyage of discovery in a “big” boat (big compared to my Laser!). Chart at the
ready on the cockpit bench beside me, sandwiches stowed below in the cabin,
we’re riding the flood up to King Harry Ferry. My mind is full of the pilot
book’s cautionary advice about crossing Turnaware Bar: “Stay West….beware the
tide race.” We rocketed through the gap in twelve metres of water ,tight under
the western bank, swept up river by the tide - my hand on the centreplate
uphaul just in case. Back in the present there’s no centreplate to raise aboard
Stargazer. I’m safely over the bar just the same: first looking up the long
manicured green sward to Trelissic House and then,after rounding the bend in
the channel, looking up between steep tree lined banks to King Harry Ferry. The
air is still, the wind blanketed by the trees. I let the stream carry us
upriver as the ferry rumbles across the still water like a huge blue water
beetle. A cormorant perched on a mooring buoy stretches its wings languidly and
a heron watches motionless from the bank as we ghost past.
Off Tolverne I circle Stargazer in the mouth of Lamouth and
Cowlands Creeks under engine – sounding
out the depth. We’re going to want plenty of room to swing. We’ll have forty
metres of chain out to cope with the forecast force seven to eight and the
spring tide tonight. I find my spot. We should be sheltered from southwest
through to northwest. Down goes the hook. We’re in nice and tight. A bit close
to the outermost of the moored boats though if we swing inwards. Up it all
comes again. Next try we’re well clear of the moorings but a bit too far out of
the shelter of the creek for my liking. Third time it feels as if this is “our”
spot: sheltered, deep and room to swing. I motor the anchor in with a good long
run in reverse, hand resting on the chain to feel for any drag.
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| Lush foliage in our sheltering creek |
By morning the promised gale is stampeding white horses up
the river from King Harry Ferry. Yesterday’s mirror calm river surface is now
furrowed and ridged. The branches of the trees perched above the rolling green
fields are lashed by the wind. There’s a moan and a roar in the air around us.
We’re lying in a calm triangle of water between the protecting banks of the
creek. Every so often a mischievous gust of wind sneaks in to give Stargazer’s
bow a playful shove and send her reeling until the anchor chain brings her up
short. The chain grumbles on the bow roller: “Stop messing around, don’t act
the goat, move on, go” it groans and rumbles. Each remonstration ends in a
sharp syllable as the chain snubber comes up taut against the roller side
guides.
I’m snug below as I look out of the open cabin washboards to
the lush foliage on the bank astern. There are yellows, bright greens and seams
of red woven in among the dense tapestry of foliage that sighs and gently sways
in the wind. The colours bleed into the water of the creek turning it a glowing
silvery green.
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| Washing day anchored off St Mawes |
The gale at last takes the advice of the grumbling anchor
chain. After two days it heads off to play elsewhere. We ghost down a river restored to its
tranquillity under blue sunlit skies. Out in Carrick Roads the last of the gale
is still blowing through from the North West. We run up to St Mawes and drop
anchor off the harbour entrance in the lee of the town. After two days of battened
down hatches I feel the need to freshen up: I throw open Stargazer’s hatches to
give her a good airing, wash my sailing thermals and peg then on the rail to
dry in the breeze; then give my own lungs a good airing by rowing off to
explore the Percuil River.
The barometer is sweeping up the dial. The forecast is
giving us two days of south westerly force four’s and sunshine. It’s enough for
a leisurely run over to Helford and a reach through the moorings to drop anchor
just below Frenchman’s Creek.
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| La Mouette |
The creek made famous by Daphne du Maurier’s novel looks
dark and mysterious against the shimmering, sun dappled, wind rippled blue of
the Helford River and the green of the rolling open grassland of the bank
opposite. All sound seems to be swallowed up as I row into the creek. There’s
no birdsong, no lapping of water, no sighing of wind; silence broken only by
the squeak of the rowlocks and the drip of water off the oar blades. At the
mouth of the creek the skeletons of boats lie mingled with tree roots and ivy
on the bank. I row in further. Fallen trees lie part submerged in the green,
brown water like the gnarled, white, sun bleached bones of ghostly talons. In
here, deep inside the creek, the tree canopy is the brightest emerald green,
lit like stained glass even though it had looked dark viewed from the outside.
The bank sides crowd in on the sinuous, narrow , ribbon of water as I reach the
head of the creek. The talons reach out from the banks and claw at the sides of
the dinghy. They close around us so that I can row no further. I feel eyes upon
me. I turn to meet the unflinching gaze of La Mouette.
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