Chasing rainbows (and squalls) round Land's End: Newlyn to Clovelly

An early start and a quiet harbour

We were up and out from Newlyn Harbour pretty early at 3.51am with barely any fuss, which for us counts as a minor miracle. Newlyn's a proper working fishing harbour, so it wasn't the still, sleepy send-off you'd normally get from a a marina mooring. As we prepped the boat to set sail, the fishing fleet was already all lit up and stirring for the day ahead, yet somehow, in the dark, it still felt blissfully peaceful. The plan for the day was simple: navigate the tricky currents around Land's End and get to Clovelly for a night at anchor. We’d spent 10 days getting this far (sailing roughly 100 miles) and we still weren’t even on the north side of Cornwall yet (and more importantly, we had 164 miles to Portishead and 5 days left to do it in). Tick tock!

Squalls and rainbows

Just past Land's End, two squalls rolled through, each one preceded by a rainbow. We'd seen a fun reel from Team Tongyeong Clipper Race not long ago about how "it's not all sunshine and rainbows out here", and apparently the powers of the universe wanted to make the reverse point. Twice in fact. Squalls are easy enough to spot on the horizon, dark grey clouds with a line connecting them to the water below, and we watched the first one approach with plenty of warning. The second caught us off guard. Both times we already had the sails braced with a fully reefed main and were ready to drop them entirely if things got really bad, though thankfully they didn't. When a squall hits, the wind suddenly jumps up a fair bit, changes direction completely and the rain gets heavy fast, but they passed over us pretty quickly each time. And now we associate rainbows as a warning sign rather than a nice photo opportunity 💁‍♀️

Coffee, breakfast wraps and an experiment

Once we got a more reasonable hour in the morning, I tackled cooking breakfast on the wonk, boat heeled right over and everything trying its best to slide off the galley counter. Getting boiling water into the thermos flasks without scalding myself took some pretty careful balancing, but I managed to cobble together a round of coffee and breakfast wraps for us both. Breakfast wraps were a deliberate (yet delicious) choice, we needed to stay alert to conditions, and one-handed eating is always the smart move when you might need both hands on deck at short notice.

We also tried killing the engine for a stretch to see what we could manage under sail alone. Sadly, even with the tide helping to push us in the right direction, we were 1 to 1.5 knots slower. So back on with the donkey.

A jerry can and steady hands

Mid-passage, Rich quietly got on with topping up the fuel tank from a jerry can. I hadn't even clocked what he was up to until he asked for a hand fetching blue roll and stowing the winch once he was done. I'd floated the idea the night before of doing the top-up in the harbour, where the sea would be still and easy, but plans shift and this is far from the first time we've ended up refilling with fuel mid-passage instead. Getting water in the fuel tank is very much on the list of things we do not want to happen, so this little balancing act was done with care. Not our first rodeo, and let's be honest, it probably won't be our last.

Hand steering and the wave-calling that wasn't

For the last four hours of the journey, Rich took over from the autopilot, and to start with he genuinely enjoyed it. The sail felt smoother without the autopilot fighting the waves, and neither of us missed the constant whirring noise it makes. We set up a system: Rich sat on the side of the boat helming with the tiller, me sat cross-legged down on the cockpit floor watching the waves rolling in on the aft port side, calling out whenever a big one was coming so Rich could steer with it instead of against it. This little monkey can surf! 🏄

About 30 minutes in, Rich worked out that he could feel it coming through the tiller itself, lightening up as a wave approached, then going heavy the moment it hit the boat, so he stopped needing my calls. He just didn't think to mention that to me. So for the best part of an hour I sat there faithfully calling "wave… wave… wave" entirely unnecessary, while Rich steered on without a word, arms aching by the end of it. In fairness, he later admitted he assumed I needed something to do to pass the time, and by that point in a long, bouncy passage, he wasn't wrong.

Dolphins, finally

Rich spotted them first, proper high jumps, clean out of the water. We'd gotten so used to dolphins swimming alongside us back in our Torbay days that their absence on this trip had started to feel noticeable. It was so nice to have our dolphin friends joining us for the ride again.🐬

An oddly empty sea

In over 16 hours at sea we saw exactly one other sailing boat and one fishing boat, both of whom had left Newlyn and rounded Land's End around the same time as us. There was something nice about not having to dodge fishing boats, racing sailboats or cargo ships for once. But when the sea stays that empty for that long, and with the weather less than ideal, it starts to play tricks on you. More than once we caught ourselves wondering if we should even be out there. We'd later learn that there's simply just less sailing going on around this part of the UK.

Land at last

As we rounded the last headland into Clovelly, the wind died down, the waves calmed down a bit, and we found ourselves under a clear, golden sunset. After such a long, challenging passage, it felt like a proper happy ending. We were grateful to be there, even if we spent a little while hunting for the right spot to anchor. The charts suggested there was buoy outside the harbour wall that we might be able to pick up - it was no where in sight.

We dropped anchor around 8.15pm, having completely forgotten we'd picked up those proper Cornish pasties for lunch. So they became our dinner instead, demolished them up on deck as we watched the sunset on the horizon. We called it an early night, and were tucked up in bed by 10.30pm for a proper good nights sleep after an early start and long and demanding day.

Sixteen hours, two squalls, an empty sea that had us questioning everything, and a jerry can of diesel later, we made it. Sometimes that's the whole story, just being grateful to arrive.

Cheeky's stats

• Route: Newlyn Harbour to Clovelly
• Departure: 03:51
• Arrival: 20:15
• Distance: 98.1 nautical miles
• Passage Time: 16 hours 23 minutes (to be precise!)
• Average Speed: 6 knots
• Maximum Speed: 11.4 knots
• Average Wind Speed: 19.3 knots
• Maximum Wind Gust: 33.1 knots

P.S. We later learned that Clovelly is pronounced kluh-veh-lee. We were going round calling it klohv-lee and we're very sorry that we got it wrong!