Blue Moon's trip around the UK

Crossing Lyme Bay is one of those things that make cruising in a small(ish) yacht special, at least if you keep your boat somewhere to the East of it. First there is the small matter of negotiating the sometimes scary tidal race off Portland Bill, always worth getting worried about even if you’ve done it loads of times, but you get round without being shipwrecked and then the adrenaline subsides and you are into a long plod across a featureless expanse of water, often out of sight of land for the first and last time on your cruise.

But as you plod, the water changes colour to an even bluer blue (it keeps doing this all the way down the Channel, a source of wonder to someone brought up on the rather browner shade of the Medway), and then there is land in the distance and it is Devon and a few hours later you’re there and properly West and On Holiday. The hills are bright green, the cliffs are red, the sea is blue, the sun always shines (even if only for five minutes) and you know this is more than a weekend away. And then you arrive in an impossibly pretty place like Salcombe or Brixham or (best of all) Dartmouth and the locals are friendly and give you the time of day and you feel welcome because you’re on a boat not the balcony of your holiday home.

That’s the theory anyway, and to cap it all this time (because I am leaving early tomorrow) I get to stay on the much coveted Town Jetty, next to the Boat Float and the (ex Carved) Angel (two courses a not very Devonian £80). Things are looking good.

Then the Sea Sprouts arrive. They have followed me across from Portland. The boys (cadets?) are incredibly polite and enthusiastic and say things that only Sea Cadets could say in films from the ’50s like “nice boat Mister”. But they have two freezers and a catering grade kitchen on board (the cook informs me) which requires them to run their generator all evening, currently situated behind about 5mm of GRP and the same of steel about two feet from my bunk. So just as you thought I was going soft and waxing lyrical and starting to enjoy myself, I have something to grump about, Even in Dartmouth.

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Miles	69
Hours sailing	0
Hours motoring	8.5

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