Campbeltown, 27 April

Veronica’s and my path to Campbeltown has been long and taken us through unchartered territory. In addition to the sailing passage, we’ve had to navigate our way out of our lives in London. Giving up careers and a family home is both liberating and terrifying. After more than a month on Novara, I certainly miss the solidity of a house, the routine of work and the trappings of life on land like amazon deliveries, supermarkets, and public transport. And yet, with solidity can come the staid.

Moving Novara from Dover to Campbeltown was anything but staid and a real test of my confidence. We had intended to cast off from Dover on Tuesday 10 April, but with a storm forecast for mid week, we said our farewells earlier and left Dover harbour on Sunday 8 April. With little wind Veronica, Steve, Despina and I mainly motored to Poole, making good time and picking up a buoy in Wych Channel in the middle of the afternoon of the 9^th. The success of our first passage was only marred by breaking the bow thruster in rough waters off Poole Harbour – a slight blow to my confidence.

The RNLI college generously welcomed us on to their pontoon a few days earlier than expected, so we could sit out the storm in the safety of Poole Haven. After a busy few days with the OCC AGM (see next blog) a new crew joined me for the passage to Scotland: Tim, Matthew, Tania, Johan and Kimo. Unfortunately, Veronica couldn’t join the passage as she headed to New Zealand for a family wedding. A new untested crew was another source of stress for me as a new skipper. Would I be able to get them to meld as a cohesive team?

Time takes on a different rhythm on boats. And 17 April came round quickly – our time to leave Poole bound for Falmouth. A funny thing happened as we were preparing Novara for cast off; when I started the engine, I noticed it was idling at too high revs. We kept an eye on the engine temp, and all seemed ok, so we decided to proceed out as far as Poole harbour and reassess. It turns out that when we were giving tours of Novara at the RNLI, someone had bumped the nav station throttle so it was overriding the throttle at the helm. I felt a slight relief to have solve this problem and we had an uneventful motor sail through the day and night to Falmouth.

Falmouth is a beautiful harbour. The weather around Land’s End was looking dodgy so we spent five days on a mooring buoy, enjoying the town and welcoming Cornwall friends on board. Tony and Lily, old neighbours from Halstow Road days came for a meal and took us out for a walk in the afternoon. Novara friend Stuart, who had helped install the solar panels, also visited.

Finally we got a break, and in heavy rain and force 4, we left Falmouth harbour for a dash round Land’s End and north to Milford Haven. Rounding Land’s End was an important moment for me as skipper. I had my first glimpse of a confidence that I might be capable of making this adventure work – and when we finally dropped anchor in Milford Haven on Sunday 23 April, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.

Milford Haven – now just the Irish Sea between us and Scotland. My main thought was would we actually make

Campbeltown before I had to head back to London to deal with packing up the flat? I was keeping a close eye on the weather, again with Steve’s coaching, and it looked like some good wind from the SE for a few days in the middle of the week. Perfect!

The weather forecast consistently showed a good run all the way to Campbeltown. The night before we left, we anchored in

Skomer island north cove surrounded by thousands of puffins. The crew went ashore to walk around the island while I staye

d on board ostensibly to ‘do jobs’ – but really to keep an eye on Novara as she was anchored close to the rocks of the west side of the cove.

We weighed anchor at 6am on 26 April. The forecast was wind from the SE, seas slight and no rain. Ideal!

Out of the shadow of land we picked up excellent wind that stayed with us for most of the passage, through the Irish Sea, past Holyhead, the Isle of Man, Dublin, Belfast, North Channel. On the afternoon of the 27^th, our first glimpse of Kintyre loomed out of the mist. We arrived in Campbeltown to a warm welcome from the town.

Special thanks to Jamie Mclean, Commodore of the Campbeltown Sailing club, for meeting us on the pontoon with Callum, the marina manager. Also to Ellen of the picturehouse, and Maria from the climate action network – all of whom came to say hi as we landed. And the best part – we all arrived safe and

well and I had proved to myself that skippering Novara is not beyond me.