If there is one thing I have learnt from writing this sailing blog it is not to tempt fate. Every time I write about a wonderful piece of equipment, or lovely weather or whatever my words come back to haunt me. Day 9 has been another fast sail. The low did catch up with us but with nothing worse than full cloud cover and a rather grey day. Progress was brilliant and we have been on course for a Sunday night arrival. Furthermore the lock into the marina operates 24 hours a day so we just have to arrive within two and a half hours either side of high tide, which is at midnight. So in high spirits we have had The Who on at high volume, prepared and eaten a vegetable korma curry, ditto a couscous and quinoa salad, continued to plough through the chocolate brownies and generally become more excited to be arriving home.

Now, in the last post I mentioned the joy of sailing in home waters. May I now mention the vagaries of sailing in home waters. The forecasts are showing a few hours of strong westerly wind on Sunday afternoon. Wind to 25kts, gusts to 35kts. Not in itself something we can’t cope with but in the Bristol Channel it means wind against tide for us along the north Devon coast which is not a pleasant prospect. Annie worked out that if we anchored at St Ives overnight on Saturday we could arrive at Portishead at a more civilised time of 1000 on Monday. Friends confirmed St Ives as a good anchorage and we could then weather the windy weather along the Cornish coast on Sunday afternoon. And then it occurred to us that we could go into Padstow on Sunday morning and miss the wind altogether! It might even be possible to get to Padstow on the high tide on Saturday night without stopping at St Ives. It is now the early hours of Saturday (Day 10) and the wind has not only dropped more than forecast it is more from the west than forecast, that is right on the line we need to be sailing. Either we pole out the genoa and go “wing on wing” or we drop the mainsail and sail even more slowly, albeit in the right direction. Or we could motor but the plan now is to keep on our current course, hope that the wind backs to the south and then south east later on today as forecast. If we can get to St Ives before dark we will anchor, if not we will keep going and unless the forecast changes for Sunday will head into Padstow on Sunday morning.

In the overall scheme of things we have plenty of time and a Tuesday arrival at Portishead is fine. We love Padstow and stopped there on the way down the Bristol Channel when we left in 2015. When it comes to the weather we must remember never to count our chickens.