Praa Sands Raft Race & Shelter Box

On Sunday 2 August, Polly picked up David, Julia and I and took us to Praa Sands, a beach about 30 minutes drive away, to watch a raft race being held there.  The charity that Tommy works for as Information Officer, Shelter Box, had entered a raft made up entirely of things to be found in one of their disaster relief boxes.

The weather was great with sun and a gentle on shore breeze.  When we got to the beach, it seemed a little empty apart from the Shelter Box team who had a tent up and their raft completed.  They’d got a patch just by the car park steps so seemed to be getting plenty of attention as people came down to watch the fun.

By about 1230, there were loads of rafts about the place, all jostling for position for a quick get away when the start was sounded.  Some were clearly there for the craic – great looking rafts, loads of tipsy pirate helpers and no sense of what might make a raft actually work….  Other teams were clearly there to win, sleek looking rafts with lots of people to paddle them.

Once the starting signal was given, everypne ran down into the water with their rafts and the Shelter Box team discovered their design flaw: whilst their raft was buoyant and stable, it was very difficult to get on to….  Tommy had an especially hard job. or so it seemed to us, safely dry in shore.

The winners were out and round the buoy in what seemed to be next to no time but the Shelter Box team finished in style, being one of the few rafts not to tip up coming into the surf.

An enjoyable day out, watching other folks do the wet bit for a change….

 Link to Shelter Box website: http://www.shelterbox.org/index.asp

A coup d’etat?

Well, what an adventurous day was had by the crew of Rampage on Monday 27 July 2009, a day that will live in history as the one of THOSE days.  With the crew assembled but facing bad weather in Biscay, we had decided to do a bit of day sailing to shake everyone down into a working crew.

 

 

We left the Yacht Haven at about 9am aiming to sail down to the Lizard and back by early afternoon, setting the sails just inside the harbour.  Having done that, we promptly lost the wind behind a headland, so took some time to actually make it into the open sea.  We then did a few tacks just to get people working together and then settled down to make progress to our destination. 

 

Part of the cunning plan was to do man overboard drills – picking up a weighted buoy to simulate someone who’d been foolish enough to part company from the boat.  The first one was fine but the second, attempting to do it all under sail without the motor got a bit fraught with the new crew taking time to sort themselves out….

 

Anyhow, suffice it to say that we thought we’d just about got things under control when the helm managed to throw in an unexpected gybe and the skipper met the boom coming fast in the opposite direction.  Result was much blood, semi conscious skipper and a good deal of hunting round for the ‘major injury’ bit of the first aid kit.  Julia and David took a look at the skipper and decided that he really needed hospital attention, so put out a radio call to the coastguard who promptly decided to get a helicopter to come and pick the skipper up for treatment.

 

From the skipper’s perspective (in a heap in the cockpit, not taking much notice of what was going on) it seemed that a large bloke in a helmet arrived in the boat in minutes few, put a sling round him, told him to keep his arms by his side and whisked him up into the air.  The only down side of the whole lift was having one’s nose about 6 inches from the winch man’s crotch…..

 

A 6 minute flight later, the skipper was handed over to the ambulance crew in Truro and installed on a trolley in the A&E department a few minutes after that.  Treatment followed, including gluing the skin back together and steristrips to reinforce things.  The doctor decided that there was no need for an over night stay so a phone call was made to tell Julia to come and pick the casualty up.

 

In the meantime, Julia and the rest of the crew had been bringing Rampage back into the Yacht Haven in Falmouth.  Polly and Tommy were waiting for them when they arrived and took Julia off to Truro Hospital to collect Duncan.  They arrived there by about 2.30pm to find him sitting up and taking an interest in the things, albeit nursing a spectacular headache. 

 

The hospital had issued instructions to avoid getting the wound wet for 5 days, so that put a bit of a stopper on further movement southwards.  This meant that Brian and Bill couldn’t continue with us and left for home on Tuesday.  However, on the upside, we found a sailmaker who had the time to fit a third reef in the mainsail, which will make coping with heavy weather that much easier.

 

The Skipper is now mending well – a touch wobbly on his feet and easily tired but no more headache and the bruising is going down.  A full recovery is predicted and we’re planning on leaving on Monday of next week.  David has decided to stay with us and we’re now looking for another crew man to fill out the roster.

 

More to follow as it happens – never dull with the Byrnes….

Menai Straits to Falmouth – eventually…..

And we’re off…!

After swinging round the buoy (quite literally) for just over a week, we finally took the decision to set off on our travels.  We were joined on the afternoon of Sunday 19^th July by David who came over on the ferry from Ireland & then took the train to Llanfair PG where he was obliged to ask the conductor to stop the train for him as it was a request stop. 

We set off the same evening, establishing a rota of 2hrs on watch followed by 4hrs off.  It was a pleasant sunny evening and a clear, starlit night, very mild & fairly gentle seas.  Unfortunately the wind was coming from the South and South West so we made fairly slow progress, and by Monday evening still had not reached the Smalls off Pembrokeshire.  As we sat eating our evening meal in the cockpit & watching a glorious sunset it was hard to believe the forecast of strong wind, possibly gales on the way. 

However by the time Julia got up to her 2am watch on Tuesday morning it was raining and blowing force 6 – 7.  By midday our progress across the Bristol Channel was negligible, indeed we were almost going backwards with the wind still on the nose so the decision was taken to turn back and retreat to Milford Haven until the storm had blown over.  One delight was the porpoises; at times there were 15 or 20 all round the boat, leaping & surfing in the waves.  It was breathtaking & exciting to watch them.

 We got to Milford Haven in the early evening, berthed in the marina and promptly went ashore to find something to eat.  We stayed in the marina until Thursday morning, leaving through the lock just before midday.  We watched the square rigger ‘Royalist’ come in through the lock before we made our way out.  Once clear of the Haven, we tried to make our way west before heading south to Lands End but had to head south in the end in the face of prevailing south westerly winds. 

 We sailed across the Bristol Channel ending up about 15 miles west of Lundy before tacking towards the north west for a time.  Eventually the wind backed round more towards the west, allowing us to make ground to the south west.  By the end of the afternoon, we were just off St Ives then had to tack again to gain ground to round Land’s End.

 We rounded Land’s End during the night and headed towards Lizard Point; at which point the wind died so we had to motor on towards Falmouth.  As day broke, we were making good progress round past the Manacles and so on into Falmouth.  We arrived alongside by about 7am on Saturday, finding a berth in the Yacht Haven.

We’ve now got a full crew with David being joined by Brian and Bill but we’re stuck in Flamouth waiting for the weather to improve a little – strong winds from the south are forecast in the middle of the Bay of Biscay on Tuesdayand Wednesday, so there’s no point in setting off just yet. 

Our next post will be just before we set off if we have time, otherwise, it’ll be from Spain.