So instead of the normal end of term festivities, we escaped Cambridge and went to Cork. Only our transport there was comical – we walked to the station, train to London, tube across to Paddington, second train towards Penzance, got off at Newton Abbott to catch a smaller train to Paignton, took a bus to Kingswear, a ferry to Dartmouth. Here we used a small tender to get to our yacht (Puffin) which over the 10 days we sailed to Cork.

Puffin is the university yacht club’s second (and smaller) yacht – her big sister Kestrel was in Norway. She takes five crew, so alongside Jo and I were the skipper, Colin, and two (soon to be highly competent) novices, Stephan and Alya. Jo and I had done lots of training on Puffin, so knew her fairly well. The first few days were spent running along the south coast – notable events were:

1) Heavier seas than anyone had previously experienced, despite very little wind.

2) Spending all day motoring in the fog and being slowly overtaken by Puff (another yacht) over the course of two hours. We also saw a real Puffin.

3) Spending the night anchored next to St Michael’s Mount. It was lit up amazingly at night

We then had a good passage over to the Scilly Isles, Puffin really flew along, reaching 8 knots at points. We then had a relaxing day in the Scilly Isles – first visiting St Agnes for a wander around and the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted. It was incredibly hot, so we had the idea to swim back to the boat. After the first few metres, we were slightly concerned at how far it was in the colder than expected water. Jo told me I should bail and swim back to shore if I absolutely wasn’t sure I would make it all the way to the boat. I had no idea if I would make it, so I ignored her and kept paddling.

We then snatched a quick cheese toastie while we motored to Hugh Town on St Mary’s. Our skipper, Colin, bravely ignored the charts and kept going past all the other yachts until we got to some sand at a reasonable depth. We then found out the beach below us had a drying height of 2.4 m.  After grabbing some supplies and the atmosphere of this Island (as much as you can in 45 minutes), we were back on the boat and moving again.

Once again we ignored the pilot book and motored over the memorably named Crow Bar on a falling tide to find a secluded spot for dinner near Tean.

The passage over to Cork was eventful, so I’ll leave that for another post. We had a great dinner of local foods in a very quiet restaurant in Crosshaven, followed by a day in Cork (note: Sunday is not the best day for visiting Irish cities). On our last day, we sailed up to Cork city, said goodbye to Puffin and flew home.

Pictures: Jo‘s, Dave‘s

As with all good holidays, we now have a longer list of things to do:

Spend more time in the Scilly Isles.

Sail Kestrel (the club’s other bigger yacht)

Sail more passages ( in good weather)