Sailing solo to the Isles of Scilly
After buying Falanda, my 26ft Morgan Giles, in September 2019 and spending the winter restoring her in my dad’s shed, she was launched on 19 March 2020 – two days before the first UK lockdown.
Living on my parents’ 50ft converted fishing trawler Ros Ailither on the river Exe, I was able to spend the whole of lockdown sanding, varnishing, painting and scraping in the amazing weather. Once the river was open again, I could finally go out sailing and enjoy the light winds and sunshine on the water. After several trial sails alongside my parents in their 33ft classic yawl Amaryllis dad and I set off west on the two boats on 10 July 2020.
My first proper single-handed sea trip was to Salcombe. It was my first time navigating completely by myself, and without any electronics on board I was completely reliant on two-point fixes.
I planned the passage and waypoints the night before to give myself a rough line to follow. It was an amazing eighthour trip with the wind behind us.
I had been in front the whole time, however as we rounded Start Point the wind changed and dad shot ahead.
After 45 minutes of tacking up to the entrance I needed a visit to the heads. I called dad on the VHF to warn him, and with no autopilot I lashed the tiller and went below for a maximum of two minutes. In that time, Falanda had turned into the wind, and seemed to have drifted miles out to sea. Dad was a mere speck in the distance as he dropped the sails and motored into the harbour, and I was left to restart my tacking and head in behind him. The harbour patrol guided me up to dad’s pontoon, and we relaxed into the madness and noise of Salcombe. It was very busy there but the weather was nice and I spent the next day varnishing and planning the next few passages.
We caught the morning tide and spent the day sailing gently to Plymouth. Once in, we met up with friends, a family who had – at the same time as me, so we spent the day sailing around with them. The ship’s captain was Sol, who was a similar age to me, so the competition was intense as we raced our small classic yachts among the cruise ships.
