OCEAN MELODY SAILS HOME : Leg 2 : Along the beautiful South Coast of England from Fowey to Newlyn

You're not going to see any bikini-clad girls on this episode or any pina coladas. It's just us and the Atlantic Ocean. However, we have got the engine on so it's no sailing, just bullshit. So we're just getting ready to go again, so we should be heading to Newland from Fowey. I've wedged Jack in his bunk because he's still asleep, and I've used a chuffing board because we haven't got lead cloths for this bunk. What's up? So we're just leaving Fowey. We came in in the dark and it's dusk now so it's quite nice to see what it looks like. Dawn, not dusk. So I slept soundly in my bunk, protected by the strong hull of our beautiful yacht on one side and a wooden chuffing board on the other, oblivious to the sound of the sea and engine, and perhaps only vaguely aware of the change in motion. And as I slept, my parent and I quietly guided Ocean Melody out through the channel and once again into the wide open waters of the South English Channel, where it joins the mighty North Atlantic Ocean. Well, we are, I'm trying to stay on course and film at the same time, we are out of Fowey and we're on the way to Newland. The sea's like a mill pond, so motoring again, sadly, feels like being in the med, motoring every day. But that's okay, this is just get the boat back to Wales, I'm not worried about pushing our limits at this point, or the boats or anybody else's. But it's fantastic, we've had some dolphins floating around as normal, you can't, they disappear before you've pointed your camera at them. There looks to be some more in the distance, although that may just be birds. It's just a grey sea and a grey sky and it's really quite peaceful here, other than the thumping sound of that eternally fernal engine. And this is what it's all about for me, I'm just so happy. Sat out here on the helm and yeah, it's freezing cold, but it's a beautiful, beautiful morning. We're just gliding along, Melissa and Jack are downstairs having breakfast, well Melissa's making Jack breakfast on the phone. We're in no rush, in no rush to go anywhere fast, thanks for that Uma. The perfect meme, I suppose, for our life. There's not even enough wind to fill the main, so we're just using it to stabilise the boat, to stop it bobbing around a little bit. Give us maybe a quarter of a knot. I'm going to pop the mizzen up though as well, because it just helps stabilise things. And the boat's so neutrally balanced, it's not even going to induce any weather helm, so let's get it up. Right, we've got two of our threesailer. They're not doing a lot in this weather to be honest. Gradually though, the wind did pick up to a gentle force, three to four, and we were able to raise some more cloth, turn off the noisy mechanical donkey, and allow Ocean Melon to do what she was built to do. Using nothing but the power of nature to carry us on our way. It's steaming a lot. Passages like this are slow paced, miles creep by so slowly, defying the sensation of speed you get from the water rushing by. So you occupy your mind, sometimes you're just staring into the vastness of the ocean. And if you're my mum, you sand the old varnish. I'm quite happy that we just realised that this tug is carrying this thing, I don't know what it is, I guess I've got toddler mood swings to look forward to, but that's how the wind felt today. Forever changing its mind, sometimes when I've been, then randomly swing round onto our nose as we sail through the catabatic turbulence of the lizard headland. And if this was a day sail and a chance to play and just mess about, then maybe we would have been a bit more purist and spent more time trimming and changing sails with the varying conditions. But this was a delivery trip, a cold delivery trip, and we had no time or inclination for playing or purism, so the mechanical donkey got used as and when required. We kept a straight course rather than putting in many taps and keeping our pace up to something above six knots. That was a bit exciting. That was, that was quite interesting. Well, the wind's picked up and the temperature has dropped. We've now got between 15 and 20 knots, 15 gusting 20. Sea state is a little bit rougher, but nothing to worry about. We're about 40 minutes off the lizard, which is the most southerly point of the UK, and yeah, going great. We're still having to motor, unfortunately, because the wind is just dead on the nose, so the only reason we're carrying some bensal and a bit of mitten is just to stabilise the boat. It stops it rocking around so much. There it is, the lizard, on the nose. We've come round the lizard, and we're probably about two and a half, three hours away, from our next destination. It's a bit lumpy at the moment, but there's going to be some rain coming, Boats can't sail directly into the wind. They can sail towards the wind, but not straight into it. When sailing with the wind behind the boat, the sails act like a big umbrella pulling you along, but when the wind is coming up from the front of the sail, it acts like an aeroplane wing, generating pressure differential between the top side of the aerofoil and the underside. In an aeroplane, this is translated into lift. On a sailing boat, this lift kind of sets the boat along, and combined with the hydrodynamics of the keel, this makes the boat go in a straight line, and you can change the angle of the sail, so combined with the rudder, you can point the boat where you want it to go. The only limitation is that when the wind is coming from an angle, which is more or less in the direction you're trying to go, the sails just flap around, producing no lift or power at all, and the boat stops dead in the water. It's handy to know this because the fastest way to stop a boat in an emergency is to turn the boat up to wind, but what if you want to go that way? Well, then you have two options. You can either zigzag away up the course, which is great fun and proper sailing. It's called tacking across the wind, but obviously this means you're adding a load of distance to the course. On a long summer's day, when everybody is warm and having fun, or if you're a mad Norwegian called Eric, then this is what you do, but if it's a freezing cold winter's day in January in the UK, and you're trying to get somewhere before the tide turns against you and the night falls, you turn the engine on and just go for it, using the sail simply to help slow down the rolling motions of the boat. 16 knots of wind, nine miles to go, about an hour and a half to get into Newly, and then I think we're all going to go out for pub grub tonight. That'll be amazing. Beer and pizza though. You probably can't see because it's the GoPro and there's rubbish among us to the shot, but yeah, it's there. We're eating quiche. Nails are down. We're making our last little motor. We've got another few minutes to get into Newlyn Harbour, but this is up now. It's pretty nasty out here now. Blowing a lot and pretty grim. The sea's not too bad though. It's not too ugly. Yeah, we're out of here. Yeah, the shoreline's miles away. It is possible. It is possible, but it's going to be a stretch. We're in Newlyn. All's good. All is well. We've been asked to raft up alongside the harbour fisheries patrol boat, which we have done. The power is miles away and I think we've got enough extension cables, but we might not have. So I'm going to catch my breath and then see if we can plug in and get some power because it's going to be cold tonight. And currently, the only heating on board is an oil-filled radiator, which runs off AC. So we're expecting to put some new heating on when we get to Wales, but all these things happen to happen in good time, eh? In the meantime, yeah, that's us. Now for some R&R, I think. We got all our weather gear off and now we're boarded up in Newlyn, but boarded up against a fisheries patrol boat, which is just over here. Why? Because it's got oil on. Oh, I've got oily socks now. We're rafted up against a fisheries patrol boat. So we're in front of some dusty boats with rust buckets. Okay, that one looks like it's rammed something. The other one just needs a good paint. That one needs a few chunks cutting out of it, which when I mean a few chunks, I mean the whole side. That boat over there looks like it's sinking because it's got so much water coming out. Then there's another one that looks like it's been cut in half, then had a metal plate welded over the back. So does that one. Well, really, they all look like they've been cut. You've got your fisherman jumper on today as well? Oh yeah. I hope we can go out for dinner tonight. I'm not sure how I do on a fishing boat because we've been in this marina for a few minutes. Well, about half an hour, maybe less. The second we got in, I started to feel a bit nauseous. As you can see, you can't smell obviously, unless you have like a weird little smelling device on. It smells of fish. It's a bit fishy. And I don't mean fishy as in fishy. I mean fishy as in fishy. With fish, not actual fishing word. Like, you get what I mean. They're just relaxing downstairs doing some editing of some sort. I have a question for you all. I was just wondering, because it's almost night time, do you get more fish if you fish in the dark? That's my question. So we are in New Lynn Harbour. We came in yesterday. The sun is shining, but we've got to stay here probably for a day or two, waiting for the tide time to get around Land's End. It's actually meant to be quite nasty today, but have a look out there. I think it's windier outside. Oh yes. We'll have a look at the breakwater later. Jack is having a bit of a regroup. Jack's eating fruit and doing an online lesson. Andy's tearing the boat apart as usual. He's trying to get the anchor windlass working properly. Andrew joined us last night. I think he's going to be looking at the autopilot because we've got an old autopilot system in place. And it'd be great if we can get that working without having to get a new one. And Mike's sorting out sails and things like that at the moment. And I'm just having a bit of a regroup and putting everything back where it should be. Everything sort of gets moved around when you're underway. So I'm just sorting out the anchor windlass. Andrew's working on the autopilot and Mike's doing some sail related stuff. When I originally wired the anchor windlass in, I just did it very Heath Robinson as a kind of desperate emergency to get the windlass working. And I want to do a slightly better version of that today. When we get back, I'm hoping to get a new windlass actually and put a whole new windlass system on. So this is still only a get your home job, but I want it to be better than it was because it was rubbish and dangerous, which I didn't show you before. Now it'll be rubbish, but not dangerous. If you don't know what this is, this is a thing called a reversing solenoid. It takes a big electric, small electricity and makes it into big electricity. So you've got your big electricity going across the big bolts and the little electricity going onto the little spare connectors. And basically it's a way of connecting a big battery to a big motor. But if you were to just flick a switch, the big will be a big arc and a big spark. And it would basically end up welding the connections together. So if you want to wire it up to a small switch, you've then got to have some sort of gate, which allows a small amount of electricity to open a gate to let a big amount of electricity through. And that's what this does. But if you do it one way, it puts these two together and the other way puts these two together so that the winch can go, the windlass can go either direction. That's the really basic way to explain it. Now you'd expect that to do something. It's all got very messy now. There's lots of plastic swabs going around, but at least this will be mounted in a proper enclosure project box. So that will be waterproof. Pass me the spanner set. Yeah. Do you want a particular size? I'll open it for you. I hate this. It's so claustrophobic. Yeah. It makes me like to fight a panic attack being here. So excuse the state of me. I'm not long up, but we're still in New Lynn and everyone else is still asleep, I think. But the baby kept kicking me so I couldn't sleep. So I thought I'd get up and cook some dinner for tomorrow night because we are going to be on a night passage. So that's what I'm doing while everyone's sleeping is getting ready. So we've got loads of food to hand because we've got some extra crew joining us that they're all going to need to eat. That's dinner made up for our night passage. Jack's doing a lesson on astronomy today, so hopefully he can use what he's learned on our night passage and identify some... I don't think I would get that far in one lesson. Well, no, you'd be able to identify some stars and stuff, wouldn't you? Yeah. I only know, what is it, Orion? Orion's belt. Yeah. You know quite a few. Okay, off you go. Mike's coming with us. At least it's not low tide. Let me see if I can pull us in at all. No, not a chance. Not a chance. Hang on, let me take the rucksack off. Okay, climb over to this side first. There you go. That's about the safest way to do it. Yeah. I'm giving you some slack now so you can move on. We're off to get diesel. We borrowed a trolley, which we found. All the jerrycans. One of the fisheries guys said if we can't, if it's too heavy to push back, he'll come and fetch us in his car, which is very nice. So before we've even reached the end of the jetty, here's Bob, who follows us on YouTube, has recognized us and said, borrow my car and you can go and fetch the diesel in the car. Fantastic. That saves us a long walk. Thank you very much, Bob. No, no, absolutely brilliant. Let's jump in. We're going into Lidl to get some extra food and some water and all thanks to Bob. Bob for the loan of his car, because this would have been a chore. It would have been fine, but it would have been a chore to do this on foot. All stocked up with water and supplies and stuff for curry and thermal. So now the mission is to get it all down this ladder. Yeah, this is sketchy. I'll go down with this rucksack first. Jack is an excellent climber. We go climbing as a family and Jack has regular lessons. So the reason I'm belaying him down this ladder isn't because I'm worried about him falling. It's because I've been a mountaineer and climbing instructor long enough to know what happens when someone does fall from this kind of height. It's not that I don't want Jack enjoying climbing or want to stop him being a boy, but the penalty for a missed footing or a slippery rung on a ladder like this just made belaying him down on a top rope a no-brainer. We're just testing the autopilot and because we haven't got the rudder position sensor, we're testing if the rudder position sensor in the box and the original autopilot box is actually working. What we don't want the autopilot to do is reach the end of the throw and then start trying to push the rudder out the side of the hole. But while we've been out getting diesel, Andy's made the autopilot work. The NECO box and drive unit that connected it to the Raymarine Brain and the Type 300 Brain with the course computer. So you're just going 10 degrees further each time. Yeah, that'll keep turning completely because it's never going to get onto the course and not move it. I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can go 10 up and then 10 down and it'll stop itself again. Why is it not stopping itself? Oh, it is. I see. Right. And to stop it, just standby. Right. But if I click auto, it will try and keep us on this heading. So as the boat moves around a little bit in the breeze, it should make tiny little adjustments, but we're not moving enough for it to make any adjustments. Right. What's the next step then? Next step is to put the wires in through some glands and put the lid back on the box. Oh, there you go. As the wind. So that's the boat just trying to steer us on the mooring. Right. Let's standby. Turn the clutch off and I'll turn it all off down there. I'm coming down. I'm freezing. Off. Hello. So is that, um, where's that over there? That's Penzance, is it? Where's that fancy building is? Yeah. Well, it's not far. Only a couple of miles, is it?