sailing

We had a final Ocean Discovery trip to finish the half term this morning. After a quiet start to the season, this week has seen beautiful weather and a lot of very welcome visitors – both humans and animals! We watched some seals at the island at the start of the trip, including our favourite…

We had an Ocean Discovery trip followed by a Discovery Voyage trip today. Despite being at low tide when the seals should have been hauled out on the rocks, it was pretty quiet this morning. There are a staggering number of pot buoys round the island at the moment, so a lot of fishing effort….

It was another spectacular day with masses of wildlife, and the added bonus of the paddle steamer “Waverley” visiting Penzance for the second time in three years. Always such a wonderful thing to see especially on a beautiful day like this. This morning it was quite a quiet start until we had a great encounter…

It was all about the sailing and the shearwaters today. The sun broke through the persistent cloud we have had for the last few days, and just the right amount of northeasterly breeze gave us unexpectedly perfect sailing conditions. Today had been going to be a day off before the busy half term starts, but…

It was a bit of a wet and windy start to the week, but the rain mainly held off until the very end of the trip. After hoisting the sails on leaving the harbour, we sailed southwards into a choppy, southwesterly sea and soon started picking up  seabirds soaring past. A few tacks out of…

It was another windy day with awesome sailing conditions. We headed further out this time and there were a few more Manx shearwaters than there were yesterday, though on the whole everything was rather quiet. The coast and sea looked magnificent in the shafts of sunlight – the sea was cobalt blue. Inshore we saw…

After a windy weekend, it was a completely different day to when we were last out on Friday. A cold northerly breeze had pushed everything way out to sea and we struggled to find much wildlife. There were  a few gannets, auks and shearwaters around, and a shy girl seal was spotted under Logan Rock,…

We had a four hour trip today in conditions which got progressively darker and dimmer! Sightings were very similar to yesterday’s with several seals hauled out on the island, the same female hauled out on the rocks under the lighthouse and a few very stern looking males round at the secret seal cove. Very much…

There was a brisk northeasterly wind blowing over a sea which was full of southeasterly swell today which make for some rather confused sea conditions. We sailed from Penzance Harbour southwards then west all the way down to Gewnnap Head, where we again found absolutely stacks of seabirds feeding in the tidal race – guillemots,…

We had a Ocean Discovery and a Bay Discovery trip today in breezy southwesterly conditions, which gave us some exciting sailing. This morning among the gannets, shearwaters and auks, we had a brief but clear view of a minke whale as it surfaced. Conditions were against us a bit to try and pick it up…