St Ives

St Ives is a lovely town. The Tate Gallery is special, and Barbara Hepworth’s home, now a museum of her work, is wonderful.
The town itself has wonderful restaurants, a lovely railway line, beaches that seem to have been made for romantic movies,  and walks.
However: 1. The approach is a teeming array of small buoys and markers, and at night this would be almost impossible. The safe entry is likely to be directly south to the very small unlit green buoy that marks the ruin of a previous pier.
2. There are no visitor’s buoys outside the harbour. We borrowed the large red RNLI buoy for half an hour, before an unidentified voice on the VHF demanded that we leave it as it was 'not viable'. The RNLI vessel is one of the newer ones that goes down to the water on a set of tracks, and is kept in its shed otherwise. We were told to anchor.
3. The anchorage is fine, polished sand: gorgeous to feel under one's feet, 20m of chain in 6 metres of water soon succumbed to the pressure of the tide and began to slip. Another twenty metres did nothing to stop the slippage. We moved to the mouth of the harbour and anchored there, briefly, until there was enough water to go in. The entrance is very wide, and the harbour has one or two fishing boats, and a flotilla of hireable inflatables with outboard motors for trips around the bay, tended by larger inflatables. In the harbour were also several tourist boats such as high speed runs in a rib, mackerel fishing and seal watching.
We had one peaceful night, and two bumpy ones.
4. However, the harbour dries completely, and the moorings are fore and aft.

If you have a bilge keeler:
i. choose which way you want to face. I would recommend facing out of the harbour, but the slope of the drying sand is also downwards towards the harbour entrance.
ii. pick up the central buoy of the mooring (a light weight white buoy) that holds two ends of a bridle together. Put one end of the bridle on a stern cleat, and the other end of the bridle on the bow. If the bridle is too short, you will have to make an extension for it. If the bridle is too slack, that may cause problems. They are substantial moorings.
iii. prepare to take the ground. It is a good moment to mention that there has been a suggestion that twin or bilge keelers, and long keelers, can take the ground in St Ives harbour. I've had two long keelers, and both would have fallen over in these conditions. Assume that this is only suitable for twin or bilge keelers.
The keels may well dig a well for themselves. If there is any scend in the harbour at all, the keels will hammer the sand until the tide is far enough out for the boat to settle. The same will happen on the flood tide as the keels rise to the scend. However, the sand is lovely and it is likely that you would like to have a look around underneath.
iv. Toilets are across the other side of the harbour.
v. You may need to inflate your dinghy in order to get ashore. Obviously the use of a sea toilet would be limited as the moorings are also a public playground.
vi. If the wind goes anywhere near east, you will have a nasty night, and the settling of the keels on the sand will feel like world war 1 and you will obviously check your bilge lockers for leaks. The scend and the chop are extraordinary.
vii. There is no fuel available, unless you can speak kindly to one of the fishing boats who are allowed to buy fuel and are able to take some of his, for a suitable emolument.
viii. Water is available at the commercial pier, where the tripper boats and fishing boats work from, but you must have your own hose.
Help from the harbour master is very limited, and this applies too to contact by phone and VHF.
ix. Lastly, the wind funnels into the harbour like a banshee. A force 3 sounded like a yachtsman's gale.
Lovely place, but really sadly it isn't for cruising yachts. £15 at this time.
And Padstow isn't far (about 30nM), nor are the Scilly Isles (around 42nM).