She rides!

I got back from moving Tarquilla to her new home last night. This involved, for me, driving to Falmouth where I met up with Mark from Trysail, our delivery skipper. We then inflated the evil avon dinghy and attached the immortal seagull and bounced over to Tarquilla on her technically stolen mooring where she has lived for nearly a decade as far as I can tell. Apart from the time she was blown off it by a storm of course.

We then motored her over to the fuel barge where we loaded up with 100 litres of the best red diesel and a stuntman called Jamie. Pretty soon it was time to move, and as we motored out of Falmouth the starboard engine stopped. It turned out that the tap on the day tank was for fuel to the generator and the engine and as such should probably not have been turned off. So once I had agreed to another year of car insurance over the phone (great timing...) which I have no intention of using to the full, I was steering out while Jamie and Mark were upside down in the engine room/master cabin number 2 clearing airlocks.

My instructions were to head out and turn left, but don't go to close to those rocks. Once in deeper water the depth sounder started working again, which was nice although once you have 200 feet below you, you're really already past the point where such things matter.

Pretty soon we put the sails up and then shut off the engines and Tarquilla proved to move rather better than anyone expected under twin headsails with a very, very ratty mizzen to steady her. She also seems to track
really quite well as long as you relax a bit. A small part of had, of course, expected her to move slowly but surely and track perfectly straight down. Davy Jones cheated, we pressed on.

A little ahead of schedule Jamie spotted the Eddystone lighthouse, which meant we were progressing far better than expected. Or, of course, that the navy are now experimenting with camouflage on surfaced submarines.

The night pressed on with a two hours on, four off  watch system and about 45 minutes before sunrise we were at the mouth of the Exe, waiting for a bit of light to see where we were going.

The entrance to the Exe has altered in recent years but the principal remains, first find the safe water buoy, which is a red and white buoy flashing morse for A (dot dash - you can bet I checked that before writing it down). Then you follow the channel marker buoys in. The route is very winding and, for me, came alarmingly close to first the beach at Exmouth on one side, and then everything else on the other side of the river. It is very important when doing this to note that the red and green lights on the buoys flash. The red and green lights on the railway signals running up beside the river do not. Tarquilla can take to the ground, she cannot however run up the rails to Paddington.

After some minor alterations to where and in which direction she lay alongside the quay at Topsham, Tarquilla was in her new home. You can see her too, just follow this link and select Topsham Quay in the presets, and there she is. At low tide she wallows in deep mud and at spring highs next weekend she'll be right up at the top of the quay with me there trying to keep her safe.

To Mark and Jamie, a great trip was had and I couldn't have asked for better company.

Once this was done I had to wait for the tide so I could check the lines when she reached the mud. This happened with me asleep on watch, so another huge thank you goes to Russ in the huge steel converted dredger George Campbell for waking me up when the starboard stern wasn't settling quite right. I have already been very lucky with the the people I have met in the boating world and I can only hope this continues.

Next step was train to Penryn, above Falmouth, walk to Land Rover Scubbery at Flushing, drive to Topsham to make sure she's still there and leave contact numbers with Russ (thanks again) and then drive home.

Right now I'm home and exhausted, last nights sleep doesn't really seem to have been enough. I feel that I should go down to her, throw away a microwave(!) and some rotting mattresses, try to stop the windows leaking any more. Something. Or paint the house a bit. Instead I think I'll just go back to bed.

After I've checked that webcam of course.

And the weather forecast.