Newquay to Bude
Newquay to Bude
Around the last RNLI crew summer barbecue, RNLI volunteers explained us how to get out of the dry dock harbor with the low tide. The plan is following; we need to move the boat from her position around 3 am and get out as late as possible during the change of tides.
We are tired even with this 2 days and nights in the RNLI office. Instead of waking up at 3 am we have decided to move the boat earlier and spend the night waiting for the good timing to hit the road.
What an idea.
The waves where breaking inside the harbor. Low waters, top of the pier around 3 to 4 meters above our deck, no ideas how to hang the boat. Action. Mark jumped from one fisherman boat to another with a rope to reach the pier while I was trying to keep the hull parallel to the wall. We are nervous, we don't feel the boat.
Couple of cowboy style maneuvers and we are moored.
Mark climbed a rope to come back in the boat. She is moving like on the open sea. Waves are heavy and the weather wont change before the morning.
Installed in our stirred cell, bumping the head with each shock of the boat on the pontoon wall, we try to escape with thoughts about the previous day.
We woke up with first, then a second, a third and so on, person who wanted to "register".
We needed a moment to understand that Newquay RNLI office was the former register desk for a gig race.
By the window around 700 women from all Europe -but mainly from Cornwell- gathered in this seaside resort to compete for the first place of a rowing race.
The small beach became a tent, BBQ, multicolored stretching trousers and endless queue to the single women toilet.
After coming back to the harbor from the city centre, only two hours later, nothing was left. The rowing boats were on trailers, participants dispersed, tents folded, stretching pants stored in the dirty laundry.
We did not understand this event.
This bracket will not comfort us long. I drink a few drops of bourbon to hold tears. I'm exhausted, nervous and anxious to face irish sea again.
At 5:00 am we jumped in our offshore equipment. My pan where the coffee hardly shuddered is suddenly enlightened. It's Sam's torch- the journalist that comes to film our departure. Given the ridiculous circus of our necessary hour needed to live the harbor we guess our amateurism will held a good place in the portrait BBC will accomplish.
Sometimes silted, sometimes pushed by the tide, we are trying to move our vessel from this dead end.
However, we finally did it. Once again we are against the current, against the odds. the sun is already shining, we're late, as usual, but we are at sea and the incredible scenery of the north side of Cornwall made us quickly forget our shame.
The rest of our navigation will be a succession of unrealistic landscapes and lights. Our stubbornness and our carelessness is sometimes gratified by the simplest sights.