Day one. Fowey to Salcombe

Day one. Well nobody said it was going to be boring! The weather for our start was inclement to say the least. Our leaving of Fowey coincided with the J24 class race weekend in the harbour and we were a bit concerned that they considered the conditions to rough to race. I joined Shawn on his RIB to look at conditions at the harbour entrance and further out and we decided that once we got across the bar at the entrance we would have a reasonably easy if rough sail to Salcombe. So leaving only half an hour after we had intended, we set sail in 15 to 25 knots of wind and a huge quartering sea making between 6 and 9 knots. However it soon became apparent that there was a lot of water inside the boat. She's never been completely dry but this was exeptional. Pete and Al Boyd ended up bailing most of the way to Salcombe as the water was on the wrong side of the boat for the bilge pump to work. When we had moored up we found that there was a leak from the bolts that hold the rudder on. This was duly repaired and re-sealed which took a couple of hours with help from a couple of great lads from Island Cruising Club sailing school, Craig and Lee the Launch, who we press-ganged into standing on our bow for an hour in the rain to raise the stern out of the water (these guys later took us to their sailing school bar) - so, four people standing on the bow, a bit of a Heath Robinson rig attached to the mooring bouy to pull the bow down and me working from the dinghy to avoid my weight on the stern, just managed to get the rudder bolts out of the water! Unfortunately it turned out that it wasn't the bolt holes leaking but a split in the GRP (fiberglass) next to the mounting. So this morning (day two) we had to be craned out of the water to investigate. What we found made me think that the whole trip was in jeopardy as there was a huge mess of de-laminated GRP around the rudder mounting. I had to go off into the adjacent car park and have a moment on my own and a call to Sal who said lots of encouraging things. But after inspection by Paul from the boatyard we now have a GRP expert, Lindsey, who is fixing it as I write and says we'll be back in the water at high tide tomorrow. We've now got some catching up to do so it might entail a 24 hour dash to Itchenor. Decisions will be made tomorrow once we're back in and know what the weather is doing. So for now it's down to Lindsy and we're off to the pub.
Afew hours later .......... it's now fixed and I fear we might have a dry bilge for the rest of the trip. Quite a blow expected tomorrow but from the West so we're good for aiming for somewhere near the Isle of Wight. Watch this space for the next exciting instalment of Around Salcombe with a Sound Crew.