Molia

Day 2 – Cardiff to Swansea

1st August 2021

A very smooth sail to Swansea on the morning tide. We noticed about half way there that the jib had a couple of sizeable holes in it from yesterday’s trip. After taking the jib down for an inspection, there was some relief that it was a couple of seems that had come undone. Unfortunately we had taken the spare jib off the boat to make more space – so a phone call home and many thanks to Jo and Caroline for driving to Swansea with the other sail in the evening.

Day 3 – Swansea to Padstow

2nd August 2021

On another fine day with light winds we left Swansea in the first lock (0700) and motor-sailed across the mouth of the Bristol Channel, past Lundy and arrived in Padstow Bay before dark, just after low tide.

The wind had some north in it, so as we were after low water we tucked ourselves right behind Stepper Point in calm water. However such waves as there were reflected in the bay and rolled Molia during our wait for enough water to enter Padstow. Despite the discomfort, the holding was very good and Molia hardly moved at all – as shown by the ‘anchor watch’ track we recorded on the iPad Navionics chart (zoomed to all the way in).

Day 4 – In Padstow

3rd August 2021

Around 1000 the crowds begin to arrive around the harbour to torment the local crabs with their newly purchased plastic fishing lines and buckets. Crabs are very greedy, and can easily be caught – unfortunately for the moored yachts, the bait of choice seems to be small pieces of uncooked bacon; and we were picking badly aimed ground bait from Molia’s decks for a couple of days after this!

Reviewing the previous evening’s anchorage at Stepper Point from the beach near Doom Bar.

The BBC weather site was 100% wrong about the wind. We had twice the amount published! But the wind was still warm; so we put the first reef in and had a fast sail on the tide, followed by refreshments once back on our mooring.

David and Sheila onboard. Many thanks to Tim for taking these pictures.

An early start and a very hot motor/sail to Cardiff and back.

A great sail on the tide up to the bridge and back with a family crew.

We had a great meal at The Deck in the evening.

Sunday

Very smooth trip back. The fast tide gave us great speed over the ground even though there was not much wind for sailing.

We had not planned to go anywhere at the bank holiday weekend. So we were very pleased to welcome David and Sheila onboard, at our berth in Portishead Marina, for drinks on Sunday evening.

The fish and chip shop had a long queue – so we ate some of the ship’s supplies with veg from the co-op. On Monday morning our neighbouring boat went sailing, so I was able to take the photo of Molia from the side.

You can just see our cleaned wind instrument behind the coffee – I need to go up the mast again soon to put it back!

The weekend 22-23 May featured some reasonably strong winds. In the end we chose Saturday for an afternoon shakedown sail to check that the reefing points work.

I can report that they both worked fine – and we needed them!

That is what Tim calls spicy! But Molia is so good natured – we made good speed in comfort with the reefs in.

So only 2 things not working at all today. The skipper’s pre-departure checklist, and the anemometer at the masthead.

There was never enough wind to turn the anemometer cups – we hope they are just stuck and will come loose in the next gale.

Our new chartplotter works really well. The autopilot is working to steer the boat, but when it is put on standby it really doesn’t want to let go of the wheel! I think I need to adjust the belt tension. For some reason the crew did not want to try out the revamped deck shower.

The rest of the trip was very enjoyable, included coffee and Garibaldi biscuits – and it did not even rain on us!

Many thanks to today’s crew.