Blue Moon's trip around the UK

Not so long ago a columnist in a yachting magazine wrote about how much he detested people who gave their autopilots names, and I felt a bit ashamed because I have always named mine. I’ve had Cuthbert, Clarence and now Raymond. Raymond is supposedly far superior to the others, being (for the geeks) a Raymarine EV-1 wheelpilot with a P70 head unit. He came with the boat and the previous owner was clearly very proud of him (as you would have to be if you had spent that money on a new autopilot and then sold the boat a couple of years later). He talks to all the navigation instruments, some of whom also have names but I will spare you, and is often better at steering than I am.

Yesterday morning, though, he blotted his copybook. I slipped the lines and motored away from the pontoon full of superyachts (I had decided to moor in the swanky Port Pendennis marina because I really wanted a nice shower) looking forward finally to a brisk sail to Penzance where I was going to catch up with Kate my pirate friend. I pressed Raymond’s button and – beep beep beep – ‘no drive detected’ he said and that was that. What could this mean? I tried several times more but he was all out of sorts. Perhaps he’d taken umbrage at yesterday’s comments about his aggressive steering. Whatever, it was back to the pontoon smartish – you can’t sail far on your own without an autopilot.

Now if your autopilot is going to play up then a good place to do it is Falmouth, where there are marine engineers of every kind. The lovely people at the marina (now I was grateful I had stayed here) found Billy who said he could do it tomorrow i.e. today but before I’d even started on my consolation pastie his mate Chris had arrived, diagnosed a loose connection and a blown fuse, and set Raymond to rights.

But by then the damage was done: it was too late to get to Penzance before the harbour shut its tide gate, and tomorrow (i.e. today) it was going to be too windy to go anywhere – and I had been looking forward to spending that windy day exploring Penzance, perhaps going and annoying Kate’s lovely colleagues Ash & co who keep The Nursery’s accounts.

Worst result of all: I had made the decision to manage expectations and not do any blog posts for a while, just so you don’t go expecting these every day. But I have done all the jobs I can face now so may as well do this instead.

Blue Moon is in the middle. Half the size of anything else in the picture. I feel like I have wandered into The Savoy wearing jeans. And these are the little boats – the real action is around the corner:

Pretty much every person I have seen here is working on a boat rather than owning it. The guy next to me had even paid two guys to come and put his sails on.

I confessed my feeling of inadequacy to the friendly helpful marina chap. “Don’t you worry,” he said, “wherever these guys go there’s always someone with something bigger, and how do you think that makes them feel?”

Which cheered me up no end.

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Miles	0
Hours sailing	0
Hours motoring	0.08