Adios Inglaterra
15 June 2016 | Falmouth, UK
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Pushing the final load of Crumpets, Gin and Banger's on the Marina dock cart from the supermarket a Mile away ( in the rain ).
We just spend 4 days in Falmouth, UK waiting for our window to leave – it is now open, and we are off Thursday morning for Ribadeo, Spain some 420 NM to the South across the Biscay. The Azores high is filling in and the winds are switching to NW, where they are supposed to be this time of year.
Falmouth was a nice final stop in the UK – it had some features we like a lot, like………..
• No Cranes – we have never seen as many big construction cranes as we saw in London, Brighton and Portmouth. The brits are building everywhere, and it is not pretty
• No High Rises – what a perfect, cute seafaring town with nice restaurants, shops and charm
• No rude, busy, stressed out people – everyone we met were helpful, nice, fun and curious.
• No Tivoli sitting in the mud at the harbor at low tide – the river and Marina was beautiful and deep.
• A friendly Royal Yacht Club, can’t miss any of those.
It gave us a few days for finish up tasks, like oil changes, getting the outboard ready for action after a year of non use, getting old deco stripes off the hull and dong some polish, varnishing the flag pole, working on the toe rails that were needing attention, and……………stocking up on things we may not be able to get in Spain, like crumpet’s, bangers, shortbread, gin, tonic ( don’t know why we think we can’t get anything in Spain, but we do this as a routine dumb move every time ), engine filters and spring water.
This was our second English experience, having come up via the Irish Sea two years ago. What we fail to understand is why people actually live here.
While it is beautiful country, the climate just absolutely sucks. This is the height of summer, and it is either raining, misting, pouring, windy or just plain cold all the time. The local’s don’t seem to care, but we are ready for SUN, FIESTA, BULL FIGHTING, SANGRIA, just something else that feels a little nicer……
We are really not complaining, just moving on…………….the asym spinnaker is on top of the locker, the spin pole is hooked up for winging out the jib, for the first time in quite a while we are going the right way meeting up with the trades for warmer climates.