The Yealm

Tunamoon
Julie and Geoff
Sun 29 Aug 2010 09:10

50:18.682n 004:03.133w
 
Finally left Dittisham on Saturday morning the 28th August at about 9am. Our friends Rick and Lucy had joining us for the first part of the voyage. We carried on down the river to Dartmouth and straight into the throngs of Regatta! It was soo busy, managed to get onto the fish dock to fill up with water, we had none left atall! then left Dartmouth around 10.30am.
 
We had promised to contact several friends and tell them we were finally heading out, but we were really reluctant to do this, as we seem to have been saying for so long that we were ready to go, only to be held back by some problem with the boat. We half expected to go out, find a problem and have to turn back! (We had an engine oil leak, which we had to monitor, and if that re occurred then we would have to return to Dartmouth to see the engineers there.)
 
So we felt like real shits sneaking out of Dartmouth, but hope we will be forgiven when our friends visit us in warmer climes! We were spotted by Lyn and Ron who waved from their balcony and a call from Ron with expert advice on moorings in the River Yealm our anticipated first stop.
 
As it happens we did lose our instruments just off Start Point, the wind speed/direction indicators, depth, autopilot all packed up on us! We kept going, but decided that we must now put in a stop at Plymouth where we bought the boat from to hopefully get it fixed!
 
We had a very lively sail around to the Yealm, with winds of force 5 and 6, and a quite choppy wind over tide sea!
 
Got into the Yealm at around 6.30pm, and moored up against several other boats which were rafted allegedly to a pontoon, although we were so far away from it , never actually saw it! (ok we did attach shore lines)
 
We didn't get to Ron's suggested buoy as we were worried about our depth. The Yealm is definitely as beautiful as everyone tells, truly stunning. Pity it was the bank holiday weekend as it was so busy, and turning our boat in the confined spaces was a nightmare.
 
We had a lovely meal at the Dolphin Inn and a super quiet night on the mooring!