A Whale of an Adventure
We set off for a short holiday on Lerryn Lady to visit friends in Carbis Bay (St Ives - the other side of Cornwall). It's only just over an hour by road but we thought we'd take the sea route around Land's End, visiting the Helford River, etc, on the way. Our friends' house overlooks Carbis Bay so we thought it would be fun to anchor off and visit them via the beach in our dinghy. All was well (the Helford river was beautiful) apart from a slight panic when the autopilot jammed the steering briefly, whilst we were negotiating Land's End! We arrived in Carbis Bay in brilliant sunshine and joined our friends whilst they were swimming from the beach. We had supper with them and arranged to take them sailing further round the coast next day. The weather was again brilliant but no wind, so we motored to Portreath, a small, silted up harbour. We anchored off and a swimmer (to satisfy a bet with friends) swam out to us from the beach, and rested on our anchor chain before swimming back. We settled down to lunch and decided we'd swim to the beach later but fog suddenly descended and we couldn't see the beach anymore! With visibility down to 50 yards, we returned to Carbis Bay with Rob navigating brilliantly (to within feet of a cardinal buoy), using our radar to great effect for the first time and with foghorns sounding every two minutes! Needless to say, the sails never got used. Next day, needing provisions, Roger & Doreen took us shopping then we loaded up the inflatable dinghy which, apart from the usual food, included a refilled calor gas cylinder, a 2 gallon petrol tank and a case of wine (Rob insisted, as it was on special offer!). The breakers on the beach were somewhat larger than the day before and we had trouble getting off the beach. Roger had to wade in up to his neck (he is over 6 feet tall!) and eventually got us safely off but not before everything got soaked and we had taken on board a couple of wavefuls of seawater. When we got to Lerryn Lady, she was rolling hugely and we had a terrible job getting on board ourselves, never mind the provisions! We were tempted to stay on board but Doreen was preparing dinner in a most civilised fashion and we didn't want to let her down so we set off again for the shore. Rob warned me that we might flip over on impact with the beach. I thought he was being his usual over cautious self but should have known that he is always right (a good decision to row instead of taking the outboard engine!). The moment I attempted to jump out into the shallows, the dinghy flipped, landed on top of us, breaking an oar and forcing us under the waves to take on an amount of sea water ourselves! Rob decided that Lerryn Lady would spend the night alone and we would spend it in soft comfortable beds at Roger & Doreen's but, after a hot shower, a good meal and one or two glasses of wine, we decided that we couldn't leave her to roll all night on her own and anyway, her anchor may drift - she needed us. So Roger mended the oar (a trusty branch stuffed into the hollow), donned his swimming trunks in order to push us out and off we set again as dusk rapidly approached. Miraculously (somehow) safe on board (Roger shone his car headlights on us to make sure we EVENTUALLY made it) we attempted to sleep but to no avail. We were tossed from one side of the bunk to the other and neither of us slept a wink. At 5.45am, as dawn broke, we thankfully pulled up the anchor and set off for Land's End. Roger reported that there were 8ft waves in the bay next day so we would never have got off then. We rounded Land's End safely (motoring as there was not sufficient wind) but, as we approached Mousehole, our engine just quietly died! Thankfully, some light winds arrived and we managed to sail to the mouth of Newlyn Harbour, where we gratefully accepted a tow from the Harbour Master's staff (someone, who we discovered later, expected to have been on the Penlee Lifeboat on that fateful night, had not fate taken a hand). Newlyn, being a working fishing port, offers very basic amenities and the mooring consists of being rafted to numerous other yachts which are in turn rafted to broken down fishing boats which are tied to the pier. After clambering across numerous boats you have to climb a cast iron vertical ladder to reach the shore. Depending on tides, this can be some 20ft of a climb! Two days later, establishing that no-one was prepared to tackle our engine, Rob decided that the winds and weather were in our favour and, anyway sailors had for years tackled the elements with sails alone and no engine, so we would sail home to Fowey! He concentrated on his chart work and I had great faith in his navigation so at 10.30am next morning Roydon towed us back out and set us adrift in Mounts Bay - absolutely becalmed! Rob played with the sails to no avail and we drifted for hours. Rob had radioed in to the Coastguard (a responsible thing to do, with only two crew and no engine) and arranged to give a progress report every two hours. By early evening the wind had picked up a little but we were still doing less than 2 knots. As we were planning to sail through the night, I suggested Rob went below for some sleep. With so little wind, I couldn't get into too much trouble......
I had the whole bay to myself, no other craft was visible, the land was some way into the distance and the sea was as calm as a lily pond. You could hear the silence, it was eerie but beautiful, until I heard a blowing noise some way off and a sort of whirring sound coming from behind. I kept turning round but could see nothing but seagulls floating on the water until, eventually I saw a fin. I knew it wasn't dolphins because they had followed us a couple of weeks before. There it was, that fin again, could it be a shark - no, sharks don't make blowing noises!! and suddenly, there it was - a WHALE, on the port side, some 50 yards away, along side the yacht. I panicked, briefly, but it had gone beneath the waves. Should I wake Rob, who needed to sleep in order to be in good shape for the night passage? No, I was sure he wouldn't believe me anyway, especially as it would probably never surface again. But it did, this time on the starboard side and nearer, so it had obviously gone underneath the boat! This time I did panic and yelled for Rob who staggered up into the cockpit in disbelief and wonderment. He said it was beautiful, as it surfaced yet again, but said he thought I'd watched too many Jaws movies when I voiced my concern that it might capsize us. Sharing it with him at least calmed me for a bit and I suggested the camera. As he surfaced again and again, Rob managed to get four shots but it was difficult because we never knew where he would surface next and by the time the camera was pointed, the front end was back in the water so we only ever got his back. I felt very privileged (once I was safely back on shore) to have been able to see him from head to tail, blowing as he went, but very disappointed not to have been able to capture it better on film - if only we'd had a video camera! Rob estimated his size as being over 40 feet long; he was certainly longer than Lerryn Lady, who is 36 feet long. It was a scary and enchanting experience all at the same time. If we had known that he wasn't going to harm us (even accidentally) we would have taken the time to enjoy the magical experience much more. At the time I was sufficiently worried to press Rob to inform the Coastguard, just in case we disappeared beneath the waves!
There was absolutely no reaction from the Coastguard and, as the bay resumed its tranquillity, we began to focus on the night ahead of us. We eventually rounded the Lizard safely (despite the usual "race" off the headland) and, at around 10.30pm with no further whale sightings, just as Rob predicted, the wind picked up and we were sailing nicely. Because we had no engine I had persuaded Rob to go further out to sea and, around 12.30 we found ourselves in the shipping lanes and the wind had picked up. That would have been fine but the swell had also picked up and we caught rollers from the Atlantic. This was my first experience of traffic lanes and I didn't appreciate that it's a bit like the M25 out there, except there are no road markings or brakes (!) and we were the equivalent of a cycle against a juggernaught!!! Rob was quite unconcerned, his previous experience allayed his fears but, alas, not so his travel sickness. We had been aboard for nearly two weeks now and he'd had no problems but the combination of lack of sleep (I kept waking him - first whales, then juggernaughts/container ships [like floating blocks of flats]) and the Atlantic rollers took its toll and he was soon suffering badly. He had not reported his condition to the Coastguard but, at 6am and after a three hour stint of my being at the helm, with no prospect of his being able to take over, he braved the cabin below to put a mark on the chart only to discover that the tide had pushed us back to our starting point just beyond the Lizard! At this point he radioed in to the Coastguard who decided to speak to the Lizard Lifeboat. The Lifeboat crew decided they should come and get us - just as dawn broke and I had regained my confidence, being now able to see the Container Ships instead of just red, green and white lights! The Lifeboat appeared on the horizon and we attempted to bring in the sails. We couldn't manage the mainsail as the swell was so great we were bounced around too much, as was the Lifeboat when she attempted to come alongside. Instead they threw a thin rope with a knotted end (a monkey's fist - rather like a bolas that they floor cattle and horses with) attached to a thicker towrope (hawser). The thin rope wrapped around my legs and then the guardrail. Being tossed around on deck, it took me a while to disentangle it before pulling the thick hawser through the bow roller and securing it safely. Then we were off. It was a very uncomfortable ride, much worse than sailing in the swell, and Rob was still constantly throwing up and he looked awful. Shackles came off and we were losing bits off the deck so we had to ask them to slow down! It took 2 hours to tow us into Falmouth where the crew shrugged off our embarrassment cheerily and said it was much better to rescue us BEFORE we got into real trouble. We were placed on a pontoon in the new Marina at Falmouth and stepped thankfully, but wearily, ashore (all traces of sea sickness immediately vanish once ashore!) only to be confronted by a journalist from Radio Cornwall, not knowing that they have a regular hotline to the Coastguard every morning at 7.30am! Therefore, before we had even set a foot ashore, all our friends in Lerryn had heard about our adventures over the breakfast news. For the whole of that day we had the press on our tails. They even sent out a team from BBC Spotlight who interviewed us and took our films of the whale for developing. All we wanted to do was sleep! The next day, our eldest son rang to see how we were enjoying our holiday. He tapped into the Internet only to find us there also. He wrote a wonderful alternative news coverage:
"It has just been reported that a 40ft Fin Whale, minding its own business
off the North Cornwall coast, has been harassed by a pair of mad sailors.
Despite altering course several times it failed to lose them -- exhausted by
the chase and thoroughly sick of the sight of Lerryn Lady's bottom it lodged
an emergency request to have them removed by the lifeboat.
A thoroughly inaccurate account of its ordeal can be found on the BBC's
website:< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/england/cornwall/3151147.stm >"
and he forwarded it with the website details to family members and friends "so that we could never live it down!".
After several days in Falmouth Marina at £20 per day, Rob eventually gave in and paid £300 to be towed for 5 hours back to Fowey. Lerryn Lady is now safely back on her swinging mooring in the Estuary, awaiting the end of the Regatta Week so that the local Marine Engineer can tackle her engine problems.
We have just learned that, in Australia, a whale landed on top of a yacht and dismasted her, so our fears appear to have been justified.
It just goes to show that you don't have to go far from home to have an exciting time.
Lin Briggs
