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As I got up at 6am it started to rain. Hard. I didn't hang about as I had a train to catch. Yes, the 16:04 from Plymouth to London. So I was motoring down the river by 7am and soon out at sea. Curses, there was very little wind so I made sure I had full sail and resigned myself to motoring. But after a couple of miles, I tested my speed without the motor and I was almost doing 4 knots. OK, I can use that. Off with the motor. Soon I was doing 5 knots and over. No problem. Except it was raining cats and dogs and I couldn't see a thing out there.
Half way across it started to get seriously windy so I double reefed and hunkered down. The wind was on my beam (I was going east, the wind was from the south) so I made great progress.
I was into Plymouth sound by 11am (at which point the rain stopped) and I demonstrated another graceful wind assisted entry into harbour. All the way round to the marina when, sadly, sails must be taken down in preference to a powered entry onto the pontoons.
I docked and did the following with fast efficiency from 12pm to 3pm: Tidied up the outside of the boat, registered with the harbour office and arranged a taxi to take me to the station, had a shower, arranged for some repairs while I'm away, had lunch on the boat, thoroughly cleaned and readied the boat inside, back to the office to hand in the keys, waited for the taxi the taxi.
Summary
A very wet but short 24 mile passage on account of heavy rain. Good winds enabled a fast crossing to Plymouth in a total of 4.5 hours.
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