Sailing

It has been great to get out sailing a few times this year. St Mawes Sailing Club have a Thursday evening series of races.

I have been out a couple of times on Helen Mary, one of the Falmouth Working Boats. These are large long keeled day boats which were originally designed to work as fishing boats in the Carrick Roads. They have been used as Oyster Dredgers for hundreds of years and some of them are well over 100 years old. In the winter you can still see half a dozen of them still working the oyster beds under sail. In fact it is claimed they are the last fleet of sailing fishing boats in Europe. They are not allowed to have engines!

Helen Mary is crew by a bunch of locals from St Mawes and they are a very cheerful lively crew. The Working boat races are very competitive to say the least. The boats are heavy and sail best in a strong breeze. They also carry a lot of sail to get them going. So the crews are usually similar to a bunch of rugby forwards.

The other boat I have been sialing on is a Marieholm Folkboat called Emily Too. Folkboats are a famous design of 25 foot wooden long keeled yachts. The Marieholm is a Fibreglass version which is very pretty and fun to sail. There is a good fleet of them based at St Mawes.