I am struck how poor my diary entries are. They are the product of a poor typist prone to typos and spelling errors and a lazy writer. They seem to lack a story line or at least it is hard to piece together. For me on the ground or at sea should I say, much is embellished around preoccupations. Will the boat be OK. Will I somehow get it smashed up on the rocks? Who is going to be my crew mate? Where am I going next? In short there is always a torrent of concerns that percolate under the surface. The joy of actually sailing, of actually making way is that all these considerations fall away, and if it is windy enough and far enough away from shore, all you are filled with is the business of sailing, the business of traveling to some hopefully new and as yet unexperienced place. This is exactly what happened to me on my sail to the Scilly Isles. I had been on my own for a week and sailed about 80 miles working my way along the UK south coast from Dartford to Falmouth. In Falmouth I had reached the point from which I was going to sail to the Mediterranean. There was no farther to go in England. I could not launch myself out into Atlantic on my own. I had catalogued the mishaps, counted the stitches still fresh in my head and came to the conclusion I was not ready for a solo passage of over 1000 nautical miles. If anything I felt like captain calamity. Anchored in Falmouth harbour under the din of a Royal Navel War Ship being refitted and a big grubby yellow Italian freighter I brooded over my lot. It was not the best of times. In fact down right depressing. I spent one entire day reading a novel not surfacing once to go ashore. Engrossing myself in a fat book is a technique I had relied on in the past battling depression. Oh yes I was depressed but for a change I had a reason to be depressed. Instead of sailing to Portugal and then Spain, I was going to spend the winter in a cold and damp boat, tied up to a dock in Falmouth. Everyone assured me there were worse places to over winter but it was more than winter that gnawed at me. It was the sense of failure so soon. For really the passages along the English coast were a warm up for the one I was really relishing, to sail on an Ocean.
I knew to a certain extent I had to keep going. I couldn't just stop in Falmouth. The problem was that my options were running out as I approached Lands End. It is, from a sailor’s point of view, well named. I was not planning on taking a right at Land's End and heading up to Scotland for the winter. There was a place I could go that would take me a little bit tantalizingly closer to my goal and that was the Scilly Isles. Fortunately for me, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the weather was ideal for sailing out the English Channel a gentle North Easterly, ( just an aside the French call it La Manche which was much more in tune with my general disposition towards it ). I was getting used to being knocked about by the English Channel. The weather forecast for the few days predicted low winds and lots of sun with things picking up later in the week. By the time I had made it up to Penzance the weather forecast was a bit ominous. Force 6 and rough to very rough sea conditions. I knew what I was in for as I had experienced rough sea conditions before but I thought as it was Force 6 I could handle it. The whole experience was a bit of a revelation for me. It was the first time I had sailed in winds of up to 40 knots. Force 6, it was more like a Force 8. The waves looked colossal as I quaked in my little boat but really the boat was not phased at all. In fact nor was I. I still battled with reefing, and the problem of the boom catching on the backstay but I can honestly say that days sail did more for my confidence and outlook than a thousand hours in a classroom. I had been bounced about the boat but I knew in my heart of hearts that this is what I wanted to do; this is what I wanted to put myself up against. Yup, I was totally crazy.