Cargos, tankers, fishing boats, busy seas, drizzle, cool weather…..and then Falmouth. That first day a big surprise awaited us when the first owners of Moondance, Sally and Chris Longstaff arrived from Plymouth bearing a bottle of champagne to celebrate our arrival in the UK! So kind! They had been following us on our website. It was wonderful to meet them and they gave us advice on where to sail and what to visit.
The south coast is beautiful with coves, rocks and cliffs but we found everywhere so busy and finding a place to moor extremely difficult. On floating pontoons we were rafted to other boats. An enormous change and shock after our years of tranquillity, often anchoring alone and not seeing many people.
During the next few weeks we sailed gently along the coast being lucky as it was mostly sunny and hot. We discovered St Mawes and the beautiful old church of St Just in Roseland sailing past Mylor, Restronguet, Mevagissey and Fowey, places Fione knew from having spent a family holiday there when she was 20. Fione’s sister Vanessa and niece Amanda came to Fowey and camped so that we could spend time together. Together we visited Fowey, Polperro and took the ferry to attractive Mevagissey where we walked along the cliff path with its stunning views.
Plymouth was heavily bombed during WWII due to its important naval base. St. Andrew’s Cathedral was 90% destroyed but was rebuilt and amazing new stained glass windows made. In Plymouth is largest UK aquarium which was well worth a visit as was the gin factory learning about the oldest operating distillery in Britain. From here we sailed up the River Yealm to see Chris and Sally who had invited us for dinner. The next day Sally joined us to sail to Dartmouth and was totally at home at the helm of ‘her’ boat once more! Dartmouth was lovely with its many old buildings, museum, flowers and trees lying on the peaceful River Dart.
Good weather cannot last forever and the next day we sailed through drizzle to the fishing village of Brixham where a kind fisherman insisted on giving us scallops to welcome us back to the UK! We sailed to Weymouth and moored on the quay in the town by a fun fair! Old fishing houses line the quay, we ate excellent crab sandwiches in an old pub and went to the nearby long, sandy beach. We sailed along the impressive Jurassic coast passing Old Harry Rocks on our way to Poole before crossing to Cowes on the Isle of Wight passing the Needles. By bus we visited part of the island including Yarmouth before sailing across to Chichester Marina.
After spending a couple of weeks emptying the boat, cleaning, DIY….we motored down the river to Itchenor and the boat yard where ‘Moondance’ was built 19 years ago. The end of 6 wonderful years of sailing adventures.
