12 June and the sun is shining, so we stop off at Small\u2019s Cove for a swim. The temperature of the water is 14.6\u2070C and ripples clearly above the beautifully clean golden sand.<\/p>\n
There are two points to note here. First, that 14.6, although still fairly bracing for swimming, is nearly a full degree above Salcombe\u2019s June average of 13.7 (it was 15.3 the following day at Ditch End). The sea is warming and rather more quickly than we thought it would a few years ago. Interestingly a surfing site on the internet gave Salcombe\u2019s sea temperature on that day as 14.3. I\u00a0don\u2019t know how or where this is measured, but it was pretty accurate and saves all the fumbling to get a thermometer reading.<\/p>\n
The second notable point was the beautiful golden sand in Small\u2019s Cove. But, you may say, it\u2019s always like that! Well, it is usually like that but the winter storms completely removed the sand from Small\u2019s Cover and left it as a rocky creek. When I spoke at the Yacht Club in March there was no sand in Small\u2019s and one of the first questions was whether it would come back.<\/p>\n
Probably what had happened was that the sand had been carried by the storm to the Bar, stayed there for a couple of months and then gradually returned, washed, cleaned, with all the stones removed, pristine. This is the way the Harbour works. The Bar has a r\u00f4le in maintaining our beaches. But it follows that the Bar itself changes size and shape and there is a possibility that it has moved.<\/p>\n
That, of course, is important for Harbour users. Salcombe\u2019s Bar is undoubtedly one of the anxieties of visiting sailors, highlighted in Tennyson\u2019s 1889 poem \u201cCrossing the Bar\u201d and, of course, the tragic loss of 13 of the 15 crew of Salcombe\u2019s lifeboat \u201cWilliam and Emma\u201d on the Bar when returning home on 27 October 1916. So the first priority is to make sure that the passage indicated by the leading lights is clear and secondly to survey the Bar to see whether changes to the charts are necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
12 June and the sun is shining, so we stop off at Small\u2019s Cove for a swim. The temperature of the water is 14.6\u2070C and ripples clearly above the beautifully clean golden sand. There are two points to note here. First, that 14.6, although still fairly bracing for swimming, is nearly a full degree above Salcombe\u2019s June average of 13.7 (it was 15.3 the following day at Ditch End). The sea is warming and rather more quickly than we thought…<\/p>\n