I glanced nervously at my watch. Falmouth to Scilly is not to be taken lightly
Carrick Roads was cool and grey, with a ruffle of breeze. But the glass was high, the forecast was stable, and the GRIB said breezes from the east and southeast, three and four. We were waiting for the ebb, so I knocked up the bacon and eggs and scrubbed the dew off the decks, casting nervous glances at my watch. Falmouth to Scilly is not a passage to be taken lightly.
With most of the ebb stream still to go, I hoisted the mainsail, dropped the mooring and stuck the boat’s nose past Pendennis Point and into the crisp little waves chasing each other across Falmouth Bay. There were bulk carriers anchored out here, drained of colour in the haze. The East cardinal off the Manacles tolled in my ear. The rocks tore vees out of the ebb, and the breeze moved onto the back of my neck. There was no hurry – Falmouth to the Lizard is about four hours with the ebb under you. Still, the inner sense of urgency forbade an ice-cream stop on the fine granite quay at Coverack, and almost instantly we were past Cadgwith, with its tin church and extraordinary mural.
The conventional advice is to stay at least three miles – better still, five – off the Lizard, which is justly famed for the unpleasant overfalls to its south and should be avoided in any suspicion of wind over tide. Today, though, the breeze and the ebb worked in harmony, producing perfect conditions for lobsterpot spotting; so it was safe to take an inside passage, dodging the odd rock. The headland passed in a waft of fabric conditioner from the coaches drawn up under the lighthouse and two French boats hogging Ch16 with appallingly detailed discussions of the menu for their five-course Sunday lunch.
The open sea stretched away to the west. But it is eight hours to Scilly from here, and we are keen
sleepers. The weather forecast was still bulletproof, so I hauled the tiller towards me, let go some more mainsheet, and followed the coast northwards. The cliffs here have been hammered by the violent Atlantic. About five miles on, though, is Mullion, with an offlying island guarding a drying harbour inside granite quays. Between the quays and the island is an anchorage, popular in the days of sail but not much used now, and impossible in anything but easterlies. In we turned. The anchor plunged into jade-green water, and the sound of a well-played squeezebox floated across from the elegant ketch that was our only companion. The sun went down red as blood. Rocked by a low, solid swell which heaved on the rocky flanks of the island, we slept.
West of the Lizard there is no longer any pretence that this is coastal sailing. If you miss Scilly, it is next stop America. In the pale and milky dawn we stowed the anchor carefully. Most of the year the passage to Scilly involves a punishing flog to windward over seas that have had seasoned P&O masters reaching for the bucket. Today we would be broad-reaching if the wind held, as the steady glass insisted it would. I pointed the nose a little north of west across the remnants of the flood towards the consolingly flat horizon. The lee side dug in, and the wake was a pleasant rustle as we hurdled the low swell. The log said 6.5, and we were getting help from the slackish streams in Mount’s Bay.
The Wolf Rock passed to port before lunch.
The light is a tower of dovetailed granite. The rock once bore a bronze wolf’s head, which howled dismally as the breeze played in its jaws, but this was quickly washed away and was misplaced anyway, as the ‘wolf’ is not lupine, but from the Saxon ‘yulf’, meaning ‘gulf’.
Land’s End faded into the haze. A nervous hollow developed in my stomach. There was no sign of any islands, and we had no US visas. But the RMS Scillonian cruised past, and aircraft buzzed to and fro like wasps heading for invisible jam jars, so Scilly was out here somewhere. Meanwhile, not all of the big ships in the Land’s End TSS were keeping watch. We did our best to sail at right angles to the lanes while the tide shoved us first south, then, later, north.
Then someone shouted, ‘Land Ho!’ Above the blurry horizon there now stood a row of little brown crests which did not move. Gradually the hummocks joined, and the red-and-white striped daymark revealed itself onthe easternmost moor of St Martin’s.
The normal arrival at Scilly is to sail clockwise round St Mary’s to pick up a mooring in the harbour. Because I am a son of Tresco we had decided to sail northabout, leaving the islands to port, to pick up one of the visitor moorings off New Grimsby. The tide
Rocked by a low swell that heaved on the rocky flanks of the island, we slept
had turned, and there were some nasty bumps off Piper’s Hole where the breeze blew over it. But at last we turned southwards round the sucking molar of the Kettle, dropping the sails as we slid between Tresco and Bryher. Here, in the reflection of Cromwell’s Castle, we picked up a yellow buoy, and breathed in the waft of honeysuckle drifting from the shore.
I am prejudiced in favour of Scilly, but just about everyone who has ever visited the place is equally beguiled. It has sea of deep-ocean clarity over glittering white sand, and air of such purity that the colours – already Caribbean in their intensity – look twice as vivid as normal.
The moors, crowned with granite cairns, are wild and beautiful. The dunes, adorned with wild agapanthus, stand behind pristine beaches. There are several excellent pubs, and on Tresco, 20 minutes’ walk from New Grimsby Quay, one of the greatest gardens in the world.
If the effort of getting to Scilly seems a bit much, the joy of being there is all the more intense. And the odds are that the voyage back to the mainland will be a downwind sleigh-ride; and that you will get the tide at the Lizard bang on.