04-Jun-2004 -- When we got up at 7am on the morning of Friday 4th June I regreted not having taken our skippers telephone number. When I had visited Coverack harbour the previous morning the forecast was clear and sunny. I asked about a charter to take my son Callum and I the 4 miles or so out to 50N 05W and was told to wait by the white and red boat by the ladder. In due course a man turned up at the white and red boat, named Early Bird. The boat looked far too small to go to sea, but the skipper, Harold, seemed game, although he wasn't sure about his insurance. But if the weather was clear, he said it would be OK.

The next morning was of course foggy. If I'd had a number I would have rung to postpone, but we had to drive down, only to find that Coverack and the entire East side of the Lizard (the Cornish penninsular) was clear.

We parked up, took a photo (#2) out to the spot (GPS said 4.37 miles), another of the entrepid explorers (#3) and went to find Harold at the harbour (#4). By 0905 BST we were on board the Early Bird (#5) and waving goodbye to my wife Jo and younger son Alistair (#6).

The way out was uneventful(#7). We steered largely by GPS, except on the several occasions when the dodgy borrowed Magellan, faced with nothing but open sky, lost the satellites. Harold (#8) was happy to steer whereever I pointed, he treated me with the respect you should when you are sharing a small boat with a man and his boy who are patently mad. Why else would they be paying good money to go and look at a random patch of sea? After about 5 minutes we were joined by Charlie (#8), Harold's pet gull, who stayed with us for the rest of the trip, wondering why this couple of punters weren't hauling fish out of the sea and feeding him the gross bits.

The currents turned out to be surprising strong. The tide was going out, dragging us South, but by 1000 BST we were approaching the confluence. At this point the GPS proved to be less than helpful, as its display couldn't give position and steering instructions simultaneously. It turns out to be surprisingly hard to instruct someone else to steer to a spot you can't see a in a 5 knot ebb. Our GPS photo was taken about 30 seconds after we passed closest to the confluence. It shows us at at 1010 BST, 50 00' 02"N 05 00' 04"W, which http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~cvm/latlongdist.html makes 100.7 m from the conflence.

Being in a tidal flow we couldn't stand still, so the site photos are taken from around the spot, not on it. (#1) is the spot (as far as I could tell), and is also looking North. (#9) is East (#10) South and (#11) West. The white town in (#11) is Coverack.

We had another pass, but got no closer. As we needed to be back by 1100 we gave up and headed for home. We made it pretty much on schedule, to the cheers of the crowd lining the harbour walls. Well Jo and Alistair called out to us as we walked up the old lifeboat slipway. Harold touched me for £30 for the trip and we were done. Not much of an adventure by the standards of some, but our own.

Coordinator's Note: The GPS photo (which is exactly as described above) was taken a tiny bit too late to be within 100m, but the visit was within range before that moment.