Chapter 10 – Last sail in England!

From Newquay Bay to Newlyn – Around Land’s End

Having spent a peaceful night at anchor in Newquay Bay, we departed for Newlyn, Cornwall, Penzance Bay.

At 07h00, we weighed anchor, still manually (John and I did!).

And, once again, the wind was totally absent.
We resigned to motor all the way; we had no choice.
At least, we were assured to maintain a good and predictable speed.

Our course was south-west, leaving the shore 2 to 3 miles on portside, to the west cardinal of The Stones, past St Ives, then rounding The Wra, Cape Cornwall and The Brisons, to take a southern route to Land’s End.

The wind came up, unfortunately against us. We kept motoring, having given up the idea of sailing.

At 13h00, we sneaked between the Longships rocks and Land’s End, which John saluted with respect, while I was finishing my lunch at the tiller.

Land’s End

Newlyn is mostly a fishing boats harbour.

Newlyn

We were only authorized to enter provided we declared having no cats nor dogs or other animals on board (though I don’t really understand why, considering the impressive quantity of seagulls established all over the place). We didn’t mention we still had a few live worms from John’s fishing equipment.

At 16h30, John was at the tiller as we entered the harbour walls, looking for the berth we had been allocated.
I was busy preparing mooring lines and fenders, not looking around, when he hastily called me to negotiate the manoeuvre. He suddenly didn’t want to be responsible of steering China Blue.

I jumped to the tiller, looked up, to discover huge fishing boats all around, a tight empty space on portside at the pontoon that we had almost passed by, with John shouting at me “It’s there, it’s there!”.

China Blue in Newlyn

A miracle happened. I don’t exactly know how, but by an intuitive-luck-inspired combination of pushing tiller, reversing throttle, pulling tiller, full forward and full reverse again, I managed to park China Blue in her designated berth in a method somewhat resembling what you’d call a Handbrake Parallel Park.
Without hitting anything!

And there we were, in Newlyn, our very last stop in the UK.

Newlyn

We celebrated our last night in Wales at the Red Lion, a very local and pleasant pub right outside the harbour.
Again, I could enjoy the kindness of the people and their welcoming attitude, and have nice talks with interesting characters, like Jacqueline and Ben, who are pictured here.

Jacqueline and Ben

Ben Gunn is an artist who revealed itself very late, and whose paintings decorate some walls of the pub (https://bengunn-newlyn-blog.tumblr.com/).
Jacqueline is a joyful woman, with the peculiar and rare characteristic of wearing my mother’s first name.

After the pub and to satisfy John’s alarmingly growing hunger, we ordered food from a Chinese takeaway conveniently located next door, and had dinner on board China Blue.
Chinese dinner on a Chinese rig, everything was in order.

Foggy Newlyn harbour

The next morning, I was quite worried when discovering the thick fog that bathed the harbour, and had nothing to do with the beers from the night before. After all, we were to cross the Channel!

But John assured me that it would clear up, and he was once again right.

At 14h00, we left England and sailed to France.

(To be continued)