Late report on Fowey

As very briefly mentioned in the last post we made it to the final ASC21 destination, Fowey. The run west from Plymouth was relatively painless and we even managed to sail a good chunk of the distance to Fowey. On arrival we rafted briefly to the rest of the fleet before a pre-arranged space opened up on the town jetty.

Sam, Peter and friends

We discovered by chance that Peter, who runs one of Sam's stroke clubs just outside Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, was on holiday in Fowey literally across the river from us. He could actually see our boat from his balcony and I could see him waving - I messaged him to say "Is one of you wearing a stripey top?" and he responded "that's me!"  He and his friends came over for a drink, which was very delightful as we hadn't seen him in person since February 2020 when Stroke Club meetings ended because of Covid.

The team ready to wheel Sam to the final dinner

Fowey is lovely but every road is very steep! On the 16th we had an end of cruise dinner at the Royal Fowey YC which is some way downriver from our mooring. We got Sam from one end of the town to the other with Mark pushing, me pulling an attached rope, and Lucilla literally going ahead to stop (one-way) oncoming traffic in some places – there is no room for a big SUV or van to pass a wheelchair. Sam was very patient, Mark very strong and there is no way we could have got to the Royal Fowey YC without them.

We had a very nice dinner with less feeling of social distancing than at the other events, but that was a good thing. It was only two days before "opening up day" after Covid. We had a few speeches and Kalessin won a bottle of wine for doing (almost) the whole cruise.

July 17 saw us heading back to Plymouth in flat calm conditions, although we did see a couple of dolphins and possibly a whale, and while everyone else in the whole of Plymouth Harbour was turning out to see the SailGP racing, I was mostly concerned that we would be able to get back to the marina before they closed the passages through. In fact The Bridge (that's a deep patch, not an actual bridge) next to Drake Island wasn't closed and the tide was fine for us to head in, so we did, and moored on the same pontoon we had been on before. We'd covered 502M from SYH including the leg north to Lowestoft.

I got a taxi to collect our one-way car hire from Enterprise, which disappointingly was a rather modest Skoda Fabia and not the Focus-sized hatchback I'd hoped for. Lucilla and Mark were whisked away by Mark's brother and we spent the afternoon packing and tidying, and trying to work out how to squeeze everything into the car. And on Sunday we drove home, via Birmingham which sounds mad but was probably quicker than the M25. The service areas were manic but with not much truck traffic the roads were ok.