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The World Cruise of Veleda IV |
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At the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club Let me start this log in the present, Monday, August 2, 1999. We are still at a buoy at the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club having a lazy, but for me frustrating day. I took the car back this morning to Mawan Smith, a small town about eight miles outside of Falmouth. I got lost! Judy was not with me to navigate as she stayed back to do a laundry. It took 75 minutes to find what should have taken 15 minutes. A poor map and the narrow, high-hedged, winding country roads, driving a standard transmission on the left hand side of the road made for a long frustrating journey to simply return a car. The car was fine, except it was a manual 4 speed transmission. This was my first time driving an English car with right hand drive. That meant the gear shift was on my left, my rear view mirror on the left, and the driver's side mirror on the right. All my reflexes had to be carefully monitored to be sure I stayed on the left. The roundabouts were a bit confusing at first, but I managed them O.K., especially when Judy was with me to advise which road off them to take. I only rotated around one more than once to identify the right exit. The narrow country roads were a constant challenge. The hedges in Cornwall are all five to eight feet in height or more and have as their core a solid rock wall that has been overgrown with foliage over the centuries. Thus every corner and curve is a blind corner or curve where you cannot see any oncoming traffic until it is on top of you, and you have no idea of how sharp or long the curve may be. Hugging the left bank at slow speed is the only way I survived. Even then, I sometimes came too close to the hedge and brushed against the vines and branches or ran up on the curb on more civilized streets. However the car was the right colour for Judy, a bright blue, her favourite colour. [Editor's note: when renting a car in Southern Ireland a while back, my wife commented on the extensive scratching on the body sides. "Wait until you drive down our country lanes, boyo", the agent said. Sure enough - we, too, were hugging the hedges!] Anyhow, I finally made it to Mawan Smith and returned the car, returning to Falmouth by local bus. The next frustrating thing was trying to send E-mail, which as of this minute, I have not been successful in doing. I tried at the Falmouth Yacht Haven, a new marina which was co-operative in giving access to a phone jack. However, when I first dinghied down there a few days ago to send my logs from the Azores to Falmouth, I took out the laptop, set it on their desk, started loading it while getting ready to plug into a phone jack. Not so simple! Different phone jack plugs! Of course they did not have adaptors. So I gave up that day. The next day in town I tried to buy an adaptor at a local electronics shop. No go! The nearest place to get them is Truro, 12 miles up the estuary. O.K.! The next day Judy and I were taking a ferry up to Truro for the day, and I was able to buy an adaptor. Today I went back to the marina, started loading up the computer while plugging in the adaptor. When I tried to dial a number for Compuserve which I got from a telephone answering service of their's (no AOL, but AOL has taken over Compuserve, and so I hope their access number will work. I have not found anyone over here who is on AOL. ), I had no dial tone. I needed to set the number to dial 9 to get an outside line. Then the computer warned me I was running low on battery power. I have an adapter I use on Veleda into a small inverter, but Murphy's law, it would not plug into European plugs, and even if it did, the electricity over here is 220 volts, fifty cycles as opposed to our 110 volt, sixty cycle system. If I was plugged into shore power on Veleda, I have a transformer which steps down to 110 volts, but I can hardly lug a twenty pound transformer into some one's office to plug in. So, I powered down. There is one cyber cafe - pub in all Falmouth, way up the hill, of course. I will recharge two batteries and go up there for a pint tonight and see if the owners are computer literate to help me send my E-mail on the batteries only. I am still surprised at the lack of awareness in marinas of the value of E-mail access for boaters. Here in Falmouth there is only the one marina that will give access, and one cyber cafe-pub. There is no store or business office that provides such a service in this small city. Oh well, the joys of being a liveaboard in different communities. August 8, 1999 Fowey, Cornwall England 50 20.6 N, 004 37.8 W We have been in Cornwall since July 23, over two weeks now. We have done a considerable amount of touring, eating, and maintenance. I was unable to send any logs out for the first ten days or so as I could not get my laptop compatible with the British system. First it was the physical connections to the telephone jacks; but then I got an adapter. Then it was a power source; then I found out my computer power adaptor is 100/220 compatible. Then I was not able to connect up to the Compuserve local access number, and could not find any AOL local access number. No one over here uses AOL. A service called Freeserve is common here. I tried my computer at the local marina office and at the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club with no success. I took my laptop up to a cyber pub, but could not plug into a phone line. However, I was able to access my AOL account on the Internet at the pub. It allowed me to read the 32 messages I had and to reply to some, but I did not know how to compose a separate message or to transfer from my laptop onto the pub's computer. I was still unable to send out my logs to the address list I have on my AOL file of my laptop! Then later when we were returning to Falmouth after having anchored up in the estuary for a couple of days, we were hailed on VHF by Ramparsand, whom we met in Bermuda and again in the Azores. We tied up alongside them at anchor in Falmouth harbour and had a good visit. Simeon, Sam's crew member, knows computers and came on board to help me load my E-mail messages from my computer onto a disc using MS-DOS format, which we then took up to the local library. There he showed me how to access the AOL account as I had done at the cyber pub. Now, we had a disc from which we could copy and paste to send out my logs and other messages copied from my laptop, and could download the messages waiting for me. Success at last! Now I have the flexibility of using the internet from any computer so connected, or hopefully, if I can find a local AOL access number, I can use my own laptop hooked into a phone line. The internet format is slower as I have to transfer each message, sending or receiving, by copying and pasting separately. I have not identified from the internet format any method of sending or downloading a group of messages by flashmail. Thus I wind up spending over an hour downloading and sending, when the flash sessions of my laptop format would allow me to do the same thing in less than 5 minutes. Log #12b Channel Creek, Falmouth Estuary Cornwall, England August 10, 1999 Falmouth is a delightful town. The people are very friendly and helpful. The main street along the shore is a narrow cobblestone winding bit of history and enterprise with historic churches, and a manor house dating back from the 1300's to the 1600's, several bookstores which Judy likes, pasty shops (Pasties are a traditional Cornish dish with a crust containing potato, turnip, onion and various meat fillings.), fish and chip shops, customs house, various stores, pubs, chandleries, fruit and vegetable markets, fish stores and butcher shops, department stores, parking lots, public toilets, and boat quays. The street changes name with every bend and turn. The buildings lining both sides date from before Henry VIII to the mid 1800's. There are passageways to the sea wall in several places, as well as a wide plaza leading out onto the Prince of Wales jetty from which a variety of tour boats and ferries depart frequently. All streets from this first one go uphill! Falmouth is on a peninsula on the west side of the entrance to the Falmouth estuary, the third largest deep water port in the world, exceeded by only Sydney and Rio de Janeiro. I would have thought Bedford Basin in Halifax would be in that category, but I guess not. The headland on the Falmouth side is protected by Pendennis Castle and by St. Mawes Castle on the east side, both started by Henry VIII as his series of coastal defenses to protect England from the Spanish and French. Both castles were used right up to WWII, updated with anti aircraft batteries, submarine nets, spotting platforms, radar, and long range 6-inch naval guns. The castles are intact and are attractive museums with special reference to Tudor times of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I, and to the civil war in which Falmouth sided with the Royalist forces. These two castles could control the entrance to the estuary, making it a safe haven for English shipping. During WWII the estuary was used as a major staging area for the U.S. 29th Division that attacked at Omaha Beach on D Day with very heavy losses. Up the estuary a couple of miles is Turnaware and Volverton where over 13 large LCTs were staged, practiced and set off on that fateful day of June 6, 1944. There is a memorial to the Americans who were based here and a picture wall outlining the preparations made and the plan of attack. Eisenhower met with the local commanders here a few days before the invasion. There does not appear to be any association of the estuary being involved in receiving convoys from North America, and was not used for such. Falmouth was bombed a few times. A humorous bombing occurred on a Cornish island called Looe Island, a small island off the coast with virtually nothing on it, but was bombed by an over zealous Luftwaffe pilot who mistook it for a battleship. Falmouth, Aug. 11, 1999 We are back in Falmouth now at anchor and have just completed the eclipse. Unfortunately it was overcast and the sun was not visible, but about 10 minutes before totality at 1115 there was an eerie grey cast to the sky and then it got dark quite rapidly for about three minutes. We took flash pictures of us on deck at totality in the dark at 11:00 a.m. On shore you could see flashbulbs popping all over as others had the same idea of taking pictures of the dark at mid morning. We have friends, Eric and Kate, on board for the event. Several boats in the area are dressed up with flags, so we hoisted our collection as well. There is a regatta on here this week and Falmouth is crowded with eclipse watchers. Last night when Eric and Kate arrived, we were not able to get into a restaurant or a pub for a meal, and so we had to settle for take out fish and chips which we brought on board. We enjoyed the Falmouth maritime museum which gave a good account of Falmouth's maritime history. Pirates and packet ships used the port, as well as fishing boats: and now cruise liners, cruising and racing yachts, as well as merchant ships and tall ships. Up the estuary a couple of miles there are 11 large merchant ships at long term moorings. It is quite a sight to be going up the Fal River and come around a bend to see three or four large ocean merchant ships moored at buoys in the center of the river. We went right up the estuary on a ferry to Truro, the capital of Cornwall, a medieval town with a grand cathedral whose spires dominate the town center. It dates back to the 1300's. I enjoyed an organ recital in it at noon hour. I enjoy visiting ancient cathedrals, churches and castles. In Falmouth the church of King Charles the Martyr is an interesting piece of history. Falmouth was Royalist during the civil war in England in the mid 1600's. King Charles I was executed (the Martyr), but after the restoration (of the monarchy), King Charles II sent a letter to the churches of Cornwall thanking them for their loyalty, and we have seen a couple of copies of this letter in this church and at one in Fowey. Incidentally, I am still a monarchist and value Canada's historic link to Britain and the monarchy. We rented a car for a couple of days to tour Cornwall and see some of the ancient sights, megaliths, tin mines, and King Arthur's birthplace and Camelot (Yes, Camelot was here in Cornwall). There is no town or castle called Camelot, but several castles and locations date back to that era, including the final battle between Arthur and Mordred near Slaughterbridge, which is near Camelford on the CAMEL River (Camelot?). Up on the Bodmin Moors we saw burial mounds, quoits (Neolithic burial chambers), the Hurlers Stone Circles (Bronze age ceremonial stone arrangements) and the stone remains of prehistoric castles and forts from 6000 to 2000 years old, the same or earlier eras as Stonehenge. Dotting the moors and the north coast were remains of tin mines, their decayed towers and smoke stacks a skeletal monument to the tin deposits which have been mined since the bronze age up to the late 1980's. We went to the tin mine museum, but were too late to take the underground tour. It is not an operational mine any longer. At this mine, there were pictures of Queen Elizabeth opening up a new shaft with all the latest technology for mining in 1985. Three years later it was closed as the market collapsed. We had a good tour of Cornwall. However, their side roads and back roads are fantastically narrow. In many places a car would have to back up to a wider spot to let another vehicle pass. They have few stop lights, or stop signs. The roundabouts were a bit confusing and I had to keep thinking: "give way to anybody already in it and to anybody coming from the right." The really confusing ones were the double ones, where one roundabout was adjacent to another like a figure eight. I was glad I had Judy navigating as she could direct me as to which of three to eight turn offs to take. Only once did I have to go around one for a second time to get the right exit. Thanks Judy! I like the people. They are friendly and easy to talk with. In addition to the Red Ensign courtesy flag, we are flying the Cornwall flag , a white cross on a black background. There is a well deserved pride amongst the Cornish people who are of ancient Celtic vintage, similar to the Welsh, predating the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans. Plymouth, Barn Pool Anchorage August 12, 1999 We had a nice sail over to Plymouth today with Eric and Kate, where they will catch a train or coach back to Falmouth to get their car. It was nice having extra crew on board and to host them. Right now I am alone on Veleda having sent the three of them off in the dinghy to see a lovely park before dark and I cleared up the supper dishes and am now listening to good classical music while completing this log. Again I feel the sense of history here in Plymouth from which Sir Francis Drake set forth to confront and defeat the Spanish Armada ( after first completing his game of bowls, of course ). We are about 500 yards from Drake Island behind which he took refuge in the Golden Hind after completing a circumnavigation. He stayed there for a bit after the voyage to identify the political winds, whether he would be seen as a hero for completing the circumnavigation or hung as a pirate if Elizabeth had cozied up to the Spanish while he was away. The Royal Navy also has a major dockyard here, and we have seen a frigate and large supply ship while entering the harbour. I am looking forward to exploring it by dinghy and motoring up the different rivers entering the English Channel through Plymouth. I will put these experiences in the next log. |
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Links:
Royal Cornwall Yacht Club, Falmouth UK Cornish Light (Travel site) Azores and Back Race '99 - log of Falmouth to Azores race - Little Ship Club, London UK |
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