Having cruised the Solent twice in my Drascombe Lugger, I decided to go rather further afield this year, and determined to cruise along part of the Devon coast. I decided the simplest thing would be to take the boat down to Devon in advance of the holiday and leave it down there until my holiday started, and then cruise slowly back to my home port at Poole. I chose for our starting point Dartmouth, mainly because they had a marina there where I could leave the boat, where it would be looked after, and where it would be easy to unload and load up again as we were, at that stage, without any form of tender.

As my younger children do not like long journeys at sea, but prefer the shorter hops between ports, it was with my daughter of 17 that I decided to make the journey from Dartmouth to Poole.

My general rule for sailing my Drascombe Lugger outside sheltered water is that if there is any mention of anything above Force 6 I do not go out at all and if there is too much Force 6 about I would only go out for a very short trip. For the journey I wanted a wind with no west in it and eventually, early one Saturday, both the Southampton Weather Centre and the Plymouth Weather Centre agreed that I would not have more than a Force 5, and the wind would be from somewhere in the east for the whole weekend. (The two weather centres had tended to disagree on earlier occasions, certainly in detail).

We set off about 11 o’clock in the morning intending to go outside of the big tide races, e.g. St. Albans Head and Portland Bill, and we passed both of these at a distance of about five miles. There were no particular navigational difficulties during the day, though, when off Portland Bill it was very difficult to determine exactly how far off one was as there was no other land in sight, and sitting only a few inches above the water one is too far off in a small boat for a vertical sextant angle to be accurate. (If anybody knows of a simple way of being able to tell how far off one is from a headland when there is nothing else in sight it would be very useful information).

For the night my Drascombe Lugger is fitted with oil lights, as I have not found that the battery lights on sale are sufficiently bright to be visible in the darkness, and I lit them in plenty of time. Overnight the wind blew up certainly to a full Force 5 and from about midnight onwards we only had the jib up and were still moving extremely fast. Across Lyme Bay the sea became fairly rough and, while we took no water over the stern, we did get the odd bit of water coming over the gunwales amidships. As well as life jackets we wore harness.

Navigation at night was not too difficult other than the fact that the very big waves made it very difficult to see how many flashes the various lights were giving as they were so often blanketed by the waves. Eventually however, we were able to confirm that the double flashing light we could see was Berry Head and not merely two out of three flashes from Start Point and were then able, as daylight dawned, to see the coastline ahead and find our way into Dartmouth. We got into Dartmouth at about 7.30 in the morning so it was approximately a 20 hour trip. The only difficulty we suffered was that the wireless got wet and ceased to function — we are now carrying our wireless in a plastic bag!

Approximately three weeks later I went down with my three youngest children for the trip back and I give below, for those who are interested, very brief notes on the various ports we called in which were all new to us. One thing we did, however, was to buy ourselves a small, cheap, inflatable dinghy so that we could get ashore from the Drascombe Lugger where we could not moor alongside. We only used this in very sheltered waters and for these purposes it was entirely adequate.

Brixham Pleasant harbour, would not like to dry out alongside the quays as bottom seems to be full of old tin cans and bits of iron.

Torquay Very pleasant place to stop.

Teignmouth Difficult to find the channel. Created amazement by going in casting the lead which I do not think any of the locals had seen before, judging by the glances we got. The harbourmaster was rather difficult to find but very helpful once found. The anchorage is far from sheltered for a small boat and had a very violent motion on her at the mooring. There are some very difficult back eddies in the entrance channel.

Exmouth Went up through the harbour to try to get to Exeter via the canal in order to see the Maritime Museum at Exeter. The harbour lock for pleasure traffic was closed, however, and the one for commercial traffic required three days notice before it could be used. Felt very disappointed in the circumstances but nothing could be done. Harbour itself, again, very exposed but obtained a berth in the dock where it was very sheltered.

Seaton One of my children had sailed from Seaton so we had local knowledge of the entrance. It should not be attempted by a stranger in other than very calm weather and with a fairly full tide and, even then, local knowledge is really desirable for anything larger than a dinghy. We were made extremely welcome by the Axe Yacht Club. Very pleasant place to stop other than a certain amount of road traffic during the day.

Bridport Looked in at Bridport, but was not attracted by the harbour, so sailed straight out again and went on to Weymouth.

Weymouth Arrived mid-week when it was fairly empty and had no difficulty in finding a berth lying alongside a yacht. Rather noisy with all the traffic, but nice to have pubs alongside, particularly as they had very sensible opening hours. We arrived at night and did not find it easy to pick out the buoys against a brightly lit waterfront.

Lulworth Cove This was the only anchorage where we had to put out a riding light at night. Just as well we did so as, although nothing more than Force 3, two yachts dragged their anchors in the middle of the night. Cannot think what sort of anchors they must have had down.

The general arrangements on board were the same as recorded in my previous article Bulletin No.61. The boat cover was of canvas designed by myself. We merely tied a line from the stem to the main mast, to the mizzen mast, to the transom and slung the cover, which was in three pieces, over it and then secured it and drew it tight under the boat. We slept with two on the bottom boards and two on the side benches. After a few days one got used to sleeping on the hard boards but it a little uncomfortable at first. We did not take lilos this time to save time pumping them up and putting them away. We did not always find all the buoys mentioned in the pilot books or on the charts, but, nevertheless, found our way into everywhere without any difficulty. The additional sails we carried being a foresail, a spinnaker and a mizzen staysail, all proved useful at various times.