12th June
Fowey (pronounced Foy)
At last the winds had died down and we set sail for Fowey. We followed another yacht out of Plymouth which was flying a Swiss flag. The wind was a south westerly which meant that we had to tack to reach Fowey. We maintained our course on leaving the breakwater to get a better angle on the wind. The Swiss yacht had tacked but we continued for a further few miles and soon overtook her. (It’s always a race when two yachts are sailing).
The entrance to Fowey was soon approaching and here we had a few rocks to dodge and transit marks and lights to cross before we could enter the river. We found our marks and these took us into the river. We decided to go past the town quay and see if we could get on to the new pontoon at Mixtow Pill. This was a very quiet, sheltered part of the river, although there is a commercial dock opposite which has small coasters transporting china clay. These ships cannot turn around at the dock area so they turn half way down the river then drudge their anchor going astern up to their berth.
We had a very good night’s rest here and decided to go down river and pick up a mooring buoy at Point Pill. The pilot books stated that the visitor mooring buoys were coloured yellow but this year the visitor buoys had been changed to blue. I should have called the harbour master first which would have saved a lot of time. We used our tender to go ashore and get some provisions for supper. Like all the other small harbours, Fowey was very pretty and full of small shops. Our mooring on a blue buoy here was not that comfortable as there was a swell coming through the river entrance which rocked us all night.