Quite and exciting day for wildlife today, spotted several groups of dolphins, and a great view of a pilot whale - unfortunately no photo's though. Motor sailed for the whole passage with no real wind. The entrance to the Yealm is quite interesting, with an initial entrance bearing on St. Werburgh's church, followed by two transits to safely navigate around the entrance bar which, from the ariel photograph in our pilot book, doesn't look as if it is natural at all, a sand promontory sticking out into the river, forcing a sharp turn.
Once inside, we tried to find a mooring but none were free, so we ended up tied up to a visitor's pontoon just upstream from the harbour masters office ( by the end of the evening the pontoon was three deep on the outside, and two deep on our side - lots of rope !
We had a walk into Newton Ferrers in the morning, and then risked one of the causeways ( or Vosses ), which are passable at low water, over to Noss Mayo, returning to pick up a newspaper and some milk before taking the dinghy back to the boat.
In the afternoon we took the dinghy to the end of the navigable river with quite a wind blowing by now. We just got back to the boat before it started to rain - at least the rain meant that the rafted horde stayed in their boats, and we a quiet night !
The following morning we had a lazy get up, planning to leave at 13-00 to ensure we had plenty of water over the bar, and on to the Mayflower Marina in Plymouth. We hadn't felt any of the forecast F5-7 in the river, but we certainly did after crossing the bar, with apparent wind up to 30 knots. We motored hard for a while, then when we had the angle, let out a bit of genoa and sailed into Plymouth sound. After pulling the genoa back in we passed through 'The Bridge between the west side of the sound, and Drake's Island, and on to the marina.
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