We've had a frustrating start to our trip. We departed Plymouth on Sunday afternoon with Phil on board and decent winds (if slightly from the wrong direction for us) only to discover the wind instruments weren't giving us any direction indication, although we had got wind speed. Paul tried to do a re-set and it did correct the problem for a short while but then we lost the data again. Very annoying but it did explain something that had me wondering on Tuesday night when we returned to Plymouth. On that occasion the wind direction was fixed in what I thought was the wrong direction and, given this hi-tech instrumentation also displays a direction of travel vector which indicated we would run aground on Plymouth Sound breakwater when patently we weren't going to do so, it proves the calculations going on were incorrect. Shame I didn't flag it to Paul then as we could have had it fixed in Plymouth along with the other bits, all now completed I'm pleased to say.
On Sunday we sailed along to Fowey and took a mooring buoy overnight. After a lovely cooked breakfast ashore yesterday morning we continued around to Falmouth to supposedly connect up with the RayMarine engineer but there was a breakdown in communication and he couldn't make it until this morning. So we anchored in St Mawes, enjoyed a bottle of wine or two, and this morning motored to Falmouth marina and the waiting engineer. He's now replacing the wind vane and running a new cable down the mast with the help of a rigger so hopefully we'll be away early afternoon. It turns out the problem was water ingress at the top of the mast into the unit, apparently quite a common problem but very annoying all the same. Boats !!!!!!!
The weather forecast for Biscay looks pretty calm and settled (hope these are not famous last words) so we are hoping for a relatively benign crossing but with enough wind to not necessitate us motoring for too long. Hopefully the next update with be from Spain at the weekend!