A Day in the Scillies

Tuesday morning was not such a glorious day as Monday had been but we thought it looked fine for exploring the Scillies by sea. I thought we could come out of the southern end of Old Grimsby Sound into St Mary's Roads and head west for the Bishop Rock light-house and then make our way back to St Mary's for fish and chips and be in the right place to head for Ushant.

Tresco and St Helens and the other islands nearby used to be joined on to St Marys until the sea level rose and it is still very shallow so we needed to be away before about 10:30 to be sure of getting over the bar. It all worked fine and we turned into the Roads and headed west.

But visibility was really poor and we realised that we would be looking at sea all around and then have to beat back. We would be getting enough horizon tomorrow so we cut short our westward journey and went through the sound between St Agnes and Annet. We saw some people sea kayaking with a rod out and that made me want to copy them.

Our new mackerel line could do with christening. We were going too fast for it to work by the book and there weren't any gannets diving but it was worth a try. 

Both St Agnes and Annet have spectacular scenery and we didn't pay much attention to the line. It was made off on the starboard pin-rail for most of the trip between the islands and it wasn't until we turned to round the bottom of St Agnes that I tried to pull it back in. It was really heavy - we must have caught something. Then we saw a large fish fighting on the end of the line. I was worried the line would break - we didn't want an injured fish and a load of plastic line in the water. It held but I could only haul it in by rolling it around the short boat hook so we ended up with a big mess of line. We got the fish in - a fine pollock. The shop in Padstow had said pollock would take the same bait as mackerel. The end of the line with the sinker and four of the hooks was missing. I hope we didn't cause another fish distress. I dispatched the fine fish we had caught and put it in a bucket down below. We would each get two good meals out of a fish that size.

St Agnes has a small harbour on the west side and is joined onto Gugh except at high water springs by a shingle tarbert. The ferrys come into a quay on the north side. We anchored on the south side and I gutted the pollock and then we went ashore in Worm.

There are a couple of roads around St Agnes and the main motorised transport seem to be adapted golf carts. There were a good few yachts anchored with us in the bay.

It's only about 10 minutes walk from the east side to the west side. There are cafes and a souvenir shop and a general store. The latter has very much the feel of a campsite shop and there is an excellent campsite above the harbour on the west side. It is part of the Troytown Farm complex which makes a lovely selection of ice cream using the milk from their own cows.

This stone snowman doesn't seem to mind warm weather.

The harbour has kayaking, stand-up paddle-boarding and sailing. There were people in kayaks and people on paddle-boards but no-one was sailing. Yesterday we had seen the dinghy sailing school at Old Grimsby out and we had seen gaff-rigged day boats hired out in New Grimsby Sound so people are sailing!

After our ice creams we bought an onion and some garlic in the general to go with the potatoes and asparagus we had bought in Padstow - the fish was going to be good!

Launching Worm off the beach was easy and the weather had turned nice - the morning's haze had cleared. We managed to sail out of the bay but the wind had gone almost to nothing so we motored over to Porth Cressa on St Marys and anchored. There are lots of visitors moorings and lots of yachts. Everyone is anchored and all the buoys are empty.

We rowed to the beach and found fish and chips. There was a chip van and a Thai food van right on the sea wall at Porth Cressa but we wandered round to the main harbour and I chatted to a German crew on a First 30 called Orcades. It had tiller steering on twin rudders - not an arrangement I've seen before.

I fancied the chip van but Alison had seen lots of sand flies on the beach so we ate at the Mermaid.
Alison really enjoyed her burger but I had to send my fish back - it was really thick and they had tried to keep the batter really nice wbich meant the fish was still cold in the middle. They got it right second time. A nice pub with good beer and then someone said 'Julian?'. It was a chap called Rob we had got chatting to in Stornoway. He and his wife Sue and their Southerly were going the other way round. We had a lovely chat over a beer.

I'm going to regret having two pints when we do our long sail to Ushant tomorrow.