We emerged into the sunshine of St Ives Bay after the fog of the night before and jumped in the dinghy for a walk ashore before our passage to Travose Head near Padstow. After an hour or so on passage the fog started to close in around us and as we rounded Travose Head we couldn’t see more than 50m in front of us.
We carefully followed the chart plotter and I double checked this with the radar. As I slowed into what appeared on the chart to be the anchorage the RNLI mooring buoy suddenly appeared dead in front of us with the headland rearing out of the fog. Into reverse, I slowed Sulaire and quickly became confused as the chartpotter froze. Adding to this confusion was the laughter of children echoing around the cliff face like some ghastly scene from a 1970s horror film. Back to the trusty magnetic compass to confirm which way we were heading. Once we had our bearings we decided that dropping the hook where we couldn’t see around us wasn’t the best idea so plan B was an hour further along the coast to Porth Quin.
After 10 minutes we were back in sunshine which aided our passage across Padstow Bay as we zig-zagged through pot buoys too many to count (but helpfully all were flagged making them much easier to see). An hour later we dropped the anchor in a beautiful cove with another yacht in the next cove. Our attempt to land ashore was thwarted by the sheer cliffs but it did look possible at low water - which we would try in the morning…night…night.
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