Newlyn Harbour Light before the next gale.




25th April

Under the surface, Newlyn is quite an arty place. It's probably because of it's proximity to St. Ives and the Tate. We walked along the seafront to Penzance and stopped in a lovely little gallery along the way for coffee and culture. The storm must have been pretty bad last night, as the promenade was strewn with seaweed and pebbles. The sea was still throwing up big spray as it hit the sea wall, and sometimes we had to dodge being soaked. There's an huge triangular outdoor swimming pool on the seafront called the Jubilee Pool. At the moment I can't imagine anyone wanting to be anywhere near it let alone in it, but then we saw a middle aged lady in a bikini just stepping out of the sea. How hardy can you get?
We've just been in to the RNLI office and asked the coxwain "Patch" advice about rounding Lands End. He's put us on to a brilliant wind strength and swell site called xcweather. It has substantial looking arrows pointing in the direction the wind is going, and is colour coded into wind strength areas. Once it starts to look like the pink/ red spectrum is heading your way, it's stay put time.
We're near the home of the Penlee lifeboat disaster which happened on December the 18th 1981. We remember hearing about it on the news. The lifeboat was manned by eight volunteers from Mousehole, but because of the dire conditions that day, only one volunteer from each family was allowed to go. The lifeboat had gone to the aid of a cargo ship called The Union Star, whose engines had failed just of the West Cornwall coast. The south east winds were classified as hurricane level force 12, gusting 90 knots with seas of 60 feet high. Initially, the crew had managed to save four people from the Union Star, but eventually, the lifeboat was thrown onto the deck of the cargo ship in the swell, and all eight volunteer lifeboatmen and the passengers from The Union Star perished. The replacement lifeboat is now kept at Newlyn. When we think about how scary even moderately choppy water can be at times, we're in awe of the courage of these men who risk their lives regularly in such unimaginable and terrible conditions. Patch is the son of one of the volunteers who died that day in 1981.