Salcombe lies on England's south coast about five miles west of Start Point. Set into a pretty ria it is a major centre for leisure craft, providing visitors with a range of river moorings and the option of anchoring.

The deep ria valley provides good protection, but developed southerlies can send an uncomfortable swell up the harbour. In these conditions the further up the estuary a vessel progresses, the better the protection can be had. Although the entrance is fringed by several dangers they are well marked by lighted buoys and leading lights that make approaches straightforward with a sufficient rise of the tide, night or day. The entrance is, however, obstructed by a shallow sandbar which in normal conditions is not a problem. But during south or southeasterly gales, particularly on an ebb tide, a heavy sea breaks over the bar rendering the harbour unapproachable. It is likewise dangerous when any swell is running during which time it should only be attempted on the top end of the tide.

If in any doubt about the state of the sea over the bar call the harbour master before approaching.

Keyfacts for Salcombe

Position and approaches

Haven position

50° 13.587' N, 003° 46.668' W

This is in the entrance, about 100 metres south of the Pound Stone Beacon and abeam of Blackstone Rock where the 000° T leading marks on Sandhill Point turns onto the main fairway course of 042.5° T.

What is the initial fix?

This is opposite the Starehole yellow Buoy. Steering north from here will pick up on the 000° T leading marks, both red/white beacons in the entrance. The front mark is the Pound Stone Beacon with a red cage topmark and the rear mark is a white diamond on a white mast, 12 metres in height.

What are the key points of the approach?

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What's the story here?

Salcombe, situated at the southern tip of Devon, lies in an inlet located about 5 miles west of Start Point. Its entrance is situated between Prawle Point and Bolt Head, 2½ miles west, and the town is mostly built on its steep western side two miles within the mouth of the small but well sheltered Kingsbridge Estuary. The harbour is primarily a recreational and leisure centre but is also home to a traditional shellfish fishing industry.

The harbour can normally accept vessels up to 30 metres LOA, drawing up to 5.5 metres draught, who can enter at high water. It has, on occasion, hosted larger vessels by arrangement.

The harbour is approached through The Range which is clear of dangers. However, above this is The Bar that obstructs the narrows of the entrance to the inlet. It has a minimum depth of 0.7 metres on its recommended leading transit, but may vary and it is worth contacting the harbour master for the latest information.

The Range is entirely open south round to southeast and any blow from these directions throws a heavy sea onto The Bar which makes it dangerous to cross. This is particularly the case during the ebb, that can attain rates of 3 kn on the ebb, and towards low water, when breakers form on the bar about ½ a mile south of the estuary mouth.



SOUTH HAMS DISTRICT COUNCIL
The Harbour Authority is South Hams District Council whose role is to make leisure visits to the area as pleasant and trouble-free as possible +44 1548 843791, Ch. 14 [SALCOMBE HARBOUR], salcombe.harbour@southhams.gov.uk, emergency out-of-hours +44 1803 867034.




The Harbour Authority charges (2019) £2.00 metre, £10.00 per week, for moorings or Harbour Dues of £1.00 metre, £5.00 per week, for vessels anchoring. No berthing is allowed without permission of the Harbour Master.

The Harbour Authority runs a yacht taxi service from Whitestrand Pontoon. The service may be
booked directly via VHF Channel 12 [SALCOMBE TAXI], M: +44 7807 643879, or phoning/calling into the harbour office just above the jetties.


MOORINGS
Visitors’ buoys are generally marked with a 'V' with maximum holding indicated by LOA. Assistance with mooring can be obtained from launches marked 'Harbour Master' which maintain a listening watch on channel 14 [Harbour Patrol] between 0700 and 2300 during the summer. Vessels can expect to raft during busy periods. If a mooring cannot be located talk to the harbour master on VHF 14 as he may know of a vacant residents' mooring.




The first moorings are in the fairway under the cottages and hotel on the northwest bank. The largest number of visitors' moorings will be found sited adjacent to both sides of the fairway off Batson Creek which is full of small boat moorings. The southwest/northeast alignment of the inlet tends to leave these moorings exposed to swell which rolls up the length of the inlet during strong south-westerlies conditions. This becomes most uncomfortable during the ebb when vessels tend to yaw violently.




This can be avoided by continuing up the inlet and passing between Snapes and Scoble points to enter The Bag. A large visitors’ pontoon will be found to the north of Snapes Point which provides the best mooring option when any swell working its way up the harbour.




There are two overnight alongside berths available at Whitestrand pontoon, off the centre of the town, when the South Sands ferry finishes between 1900 and 0800. This can accommodate two vessels of up to 12 metres and can be booked by arrangement with the harbour office.


ANCHORING
Recommended anchorages are on the eastern side of the fairway. On the east side of the entrance close northwest of the Black Stone, Sunny Cove is a popular anchorage for its beach. It has good sand holding with 2 metres at low water but it is highly exposed to swell and can only be used in settled conditions.




Slightly less than ½ a mile further up the fairway lies Smalls Cove, and after avoiding the Yacht Club's racing start line when appropriate, offers better protection as does Ditch End to the southwest and clear of the visitor moorings. Holding can be uncertain at Ditch End so make very sure the hook is well set with ample scope.





Continuing up the estuary past The Bag, where the stream forks, there are more secluded anchorages around Salt Stone and in the entrance to Frogmore Creek.

How to get in?

Use southwestern England’s coastal overview from Start Point to Lizard Point for seaward approaches.

Located 5½ miles westward of Lizard Point, the 128 metres high Bolt Head is a prominent headland. A coast guard station stands on Bolt Head and a conspicuous radio tower is situated about a mile north-westward of it. At its base are two conical high-water rocks, the Great Mew Stone and Little Mew Stone. Salcombe’s entrance is made recognisable by the sudden turn to the northward of the cliffs at Bolt Head and it is approached between Bolt Head and Prawle Point 2½ miles east.




The approaches are called The Range which is clear of dangers save for the small deep Rickham Rock that lies ¼ of a mile off the eastern shore with 2.7 metres of water.



The Bar is made up of a ridge of sand extending from Limebury Point on the eastern side, to ¼ of a mile above the Great Eelstone, a high overhanging rock on the western shore. The bar has not more than 0.7 to 1.9 metres on it at low-water springs and a heavy sea breaks over it in southerly gales. It is inadvisable to attempt to cross the bar on an ebb tide with strong onshore winds or swell but at other times is easily navigable with care.

The deepest channel is along the west side of the entrance marked by leading marks on Sandhill Point within the harbour. The leading line is marked by a red and white striped pole with a red topmark on Pound Stone Rock in transit beacons in line 000° T, with a rear beacon on Sandhill Point which is white with a horizontally striped red and white diamond topmark, 12 metres in height.

By night the rear mark also displays a sectored light Fl. WRG 2s with the white sector 357° - 002°T. When approaching the narrows the helm should be mindful of tidal streams which can attain rates of up to 3 kn during springs.



From the initial fix steer north to pick up on the 000° T leading marks, both red/white beacons in the entrance. At night use the directional light. This passes about 600 metres east of Bolt Head, with its outlying Mew Stone and Little Mew Stone. The 16-meters high Mew Stone has several rocks extending eastward beyond it.




It then passes over Starehole Bay which provides a good anchorage, and 300 metres east of Great Eelstone. The dangerous always covered Cadmus Rock, with 0.1 metres over it, lies about 120 metres south of Great Eelstone.




From Great Eelstone an 8 kn harbour speed limit applies and The Bar is 400 metres north. Once passing through the port buoy, Fl. R.5s, marking Bass Rock that dries to 0.8 metres, and the starboard buoy, Fl.G.5s marking Wolf Rock that dries to 0.6, The Bar has been passed and depths will begin to increase.




When Blackstone Rock is drawing abeam to starboard, marked at its western extremity by an unlit green and white beacon and two lit starboard conical buoys, the main fairway turns northeast from 000° T to a course of 042.5° T. By night this is supported by leading lights, both Q, situated near Scoble Point with the rear beacon upon a stone column at 45 metres elevation on the east side of The Bag. This turn is supported by three sets of lit lateral buoys and a new leading light. Many of the rocks at this turning point are also marked by beacons.




After the turn, continue up the middle of the wide fairway on a bearing of 042.5° T. This passes beneath the town of Salcombe that is to the largest part built along the west side of the estuary between Sandhill Point and Batson Creek located ¾ of a mile northeast. In the fairway, there is ample deep-water up past the town and above The Bag. Yachts must motor, not sail, within the harbour area during the busy months of July/August. A reduced speed limit of 6kn exists between Marine Hotel/racing start line and the Salt Stone.




During dinghy racing, typically at weekends, a fairway is established along the northern shore of the harbour marked by a line of yellow buoys marked 'Fairway' with special marker buoys with cross marks on either end.




When the fairway is in operation a flashing yellow light on the overlooking Salcombe Yacht Club Watch House denotes that the racing dinghy free fairway is in operation. Racing dinghies are prohibited from entering the fairway which is to be used by vessels entering and leaving the harbour.




The first set of moorings will be encountered just below the Salcombe Harbour Hotel opposite Small's Cove. The majority line the fairway off Batson Creek and continue on to pass between Snapes and Scoble points to the visitor pontoon in The Bag.




Pick up suitable moorings or anchor off according to your pleasure. Land by tenders in the town securing to the inside of Normandy Pontoon. The Normandy pontoon may be used by visitors for short stays, 30 minutes only from 0700-1900, to take in water load or unload gear.

Why visit here?

Salcombe received its name from the old Saxon words 'sealt', meaning salt and 'cumb' or 'coombe' meaning valley, so the name means 'salt valley’. The excellent natural protection that the Kingsbury Estuary offered would always make Salcombe look to the sea for its prosperity and development down through the centuries.



Human inhabitation is unsurprisingly long established here and archaeologists have identified sites of Stone Age settlements on the cliff tops on both sides of the mouth of the estuary. It was a cross-channel trading port 3500 years ago as a recent discovery of a Bronze Age shipwreck at Moor Sands, one of only three known in Britain, revealed weapons and jewellery made in what is now France. The oldest local settlements were those of inland farmers who also fished and had ‘cellars’, sheds for their boat and net storage sheds, close to the shore. They would not have lived there as the coastline at this time was a dangerous place that was always vulnerable to a seaward attack. This remained the case long after Britain’s primary invaders, Roman, Anglo Saxon, Viking and Norman, had come, gone or integrated. This southernmost tip of the Devon coast remained vulnerable to the French or pirates seeking temporary shelter, manpower and supplies.




So Salcombe failed to exist as any form of a settlement in a 9th-century charter of the South Hams. It would be as late as 1244, centuries after most of the other neighbouring settlements were identified, that the name Salcombe first appeared in writing. References to Salcombe would remain limited thereafter for several centuries afterwards. For unlike Dartmouth, Salcombe was never a borough and scarcely achieved any form of administrative status for centuries. The absence of formal institutions meant there were few written records, so the town in historical circles is often described as ‘a forgotten settlement’. The area was, it is believed, referred to as ‘Portlemouth’, 'the port at the mouth of the river', in 1342 which was recorded to have sent ‘barges’ and a ‘ballinger’ to transport troops to Brittany at the start of the Hundred Years War. References abound of it having ships of some size based in the harbour and the stone Chapel-of-Ease, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, was built in the town in 1401 indicating a well-established community. It must have been an important place and wealthy enough to attract the unwelcome attentions of a French force who raided it in 1403, after having previously sacked and burnt Plymouth.



Though there are no records to support it, King Henry VIII is believed to have built Fort Charles at the entrance to the estuary as part of a chain of coastal defences. The estuary and fort were later utilised by Charles I as a garrison fortification in an attempt to protect the town during the English Civil War. Fort Charles would be the last place in the country to hold out in the Royal cause against the victorious Parliamentarian troops of Oliver Cromwell. Royalists remained besieged in it for four months and only surrendered when it became clear that all other royalist strongholds had been overrun. They only withdrew then on the terms that the garrison was allowed to march away with their colours flying. The castle was ‘slighted’, wrecked, in the aftermath on the orders of Parliament as it was thought ‘too dangerous’ to allow it to remain.

Again few published references to Salcombe are to be found for the following century when it is generally presumed that the inhabitants made their living by fishing and smuggling and kept quiet about it. But it was during this time developing significant boat building and trading expertise as by the 1790s Salcombe had emerged as a major centre for shipping. Early trades were coastal, salt to Newfoundland and salted fish back to Europe. But at the end of the great wars of the French Revolution in 1815 Salcombe had carved out a niche in the fruit trade. Salcombe vessels sailed to Iberia, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean as well as to the Azores and Newfoundland returning with oranges and lemons from the Azores, and dried fruit such as pineapples from the Bahamas and West Indies. Other cargoes brought back included sugar, rum, coconuts and shaddocks. During the 19th-century, the Salcombe Fruiters were responsible for importing over eighty percent of fresh citrus fruits to England.




The growth in maritime trade required bigger yards often extending out onto the foreshore and the town expanded along the narrow estuary margin. It also required superb and speedy ‘fruit schooners’ which Salcombe and Kingsbridge were busily turning out. By 1819 a writer referred to Salcombe as having ''three yards for shipwrights” at a time when the town had about fifty stone houses that he described most as being “low mean structures”. But as the boom in trade and boat building rolled on, the houses got bigger and more elegant. Behind them came schools, churches, market hall, post office, customs house, coastguard cottages, banks, a yacht club and other facilities that followed a thriving town. The majority of the Victorian houses seen in Salcombe today were built by ship owners and masters of this boom period.


Nearly 300 sailing vessels and some steamers were built in Salcombe and around the Estuary to Kingsbridge during the 19th-century, almost all for local owners. The primary type of ship built in the estuary was the copper-bottomed Salcombe Fruiters a top-sail schooner often called a Salcombe Schooner. These were, at the time, the fastest cargo-carrying sailing vessels in England designed for the fruit trade between the Azores and London that could be sailed with few hands mostly from Salcombe. Speed was necessary to carry the perishable cargoes of fresh fruit from Spain and the Azores back to home ports before it started to deteriorate. The focus on speed and ease of handling unfortunatly came at a deadly price as almost half the towns fleet were lost with all hands. A mutual marine assurance association had to be established in 1811 to insure Salcombe ships.

By the latter end of the 19th-century, the main nucleus of the town had been formed by waterfront boathouses, shipyards and sail-lofts. Numerous narrow alleyways led from Fore Street to courts of cottages or rows inhabited by mariners and coastguards. The fruit trade reached its peak in 1860 but began to decline throughout the 1870s before virtually vanishing by the 1880s when the fruit crop was hit by disease and sail finally gave way to steam and iron vessels. Lack of capital, limitations of space and a shortage of locally available materials made it quite impracticable for Salcombe to compete with the industrial yards of Northern England and Scotland in the building of iron and steel ships. Fortunately, this was at the time when another door of possibility opened for the town.

The first ‘holiday home’ in Salcombe was built in 1764, on the Moult, between North and South Sands, by John Hawkins who described it as a "mere pleasure box". When the French Riviera was cut off due to war with France, the climate and magnificent scenery of the Kingsbridge Estuary at Salcombe began to attract visitors who built residences at various viewpoints along Cliff Road. The Victorian historian, James Froude, noted "Winter in Salcombe is winter only in name" and the arrival of the railway at Kingsbridge in 1893, and the motor bus, gradually brought the town a new lease of life as a tourist resort for those who enjoyed the benign climate, the beautiful scenery, sea fishing and sailing. In the early years of the 20th-century, there came the following wave of wealthy retirees who came to live here and this trend continued in the 1920s and ’30s.




During the Second World War, the town was a target of many hit and run bombings undertaken by fast fighter/bombers. These sadly killed many and destroy several of its historic buildings. By 1943 the advance party of the US Navy had arrived and requisitioned the Salcombe Hotel for its headquarters. The slipway at Whitestrand Quay was constructed in preparation for the D-Day assault and in the days leading up to the invasion 37 officers and 1793 men were based at Salcombe. When the time came, 66 ships and many auxiliary vessels sailed from Salcombe as part of "Force U" which landed on Utah Beach, Normandy. Recovery was slow after the war. Travel was difficult in the period of post-war austerity with food and petrol rationing both continuing for some years. When the summer visitors eventually returned Devon's southernmost resort town seemed much the same as before.




Salcombe today, with steep and narrow lanes all the time leading down to the water, continues to look seaward for prosperity. Although there is still some fishing activity its gaze is firmly set on the leisure boat industry. Having in the past decades fully transformed itself into an upmarket boating resort, mainly in the summer, the character of the town has once again moved on. Fore Street and every few yards of its lanes today have cafes, restaurants or designer clothes shops that are mobbed with holidaymakers in summer.




From a boating perspective Salcombe is one of Devon's top centres for boating and to this community, it has a lot to offer. Occupying a superb location, almost at the mouth of the Kingsbridge Estuary, it is an absolutely beautiful town replete with the ruined Fort Charles at the entrance that manages to inject a touch of romance amid the villas and hotels. The Civil War relic along with the town standing on the western side of a picturesque wooded estuary make it appear like a smaller version of its near neighbour Dartmouth. And like Dartmouth and the River Dart, it also has the Kingsbridge Estuary above it providing calm tidal waters to explore that run inland to the pretty town of Kingsbridge. But unlike Dartmouth it still somehow, beneath all that new designer veneer, retains the feel of a fishing village. It is a true English boating paradise.

What facilities are available?

There are two Harbour Authority showers at Whitestrand, pin code printed on mooring receipt. Showers are also available and laundry at Salcombe Yacht Club situated at Cliff House. Freshwater is available at Normandy Pontoon and Baston Quay. During June, July and August fresh water is available on the visitors’ pontoon in The Bag between 1000 & 1100 daily when the harbourmaster connects a pump. A pay-as-you-go WiFi service covers the moorings provided by WiFi Spark and also at Salcombe Library, during opening hours, as well as many cafes and pubs.




Diesel and Petrol are available from the Fuel Barge, which operates on VHF 6 [FUEL BARGE] or M: +44 7801798862, P: +44 1548 843838 available during the season 0830-1700 but closed Sat/Sun. Calor and camping gas are available from the chandlery and the DIY centre in Island Street. All harbour users are requested to recycle as much of their waste as possible separating paper, cardboard, cans, plastic bottles and glass. Recycling points are located afloat opposite Normandy Pontoon and on the visitors’ pontoon in The Bag.

Most of the landings and slipways dry out at low water except the slipway at the Creek Boat Park, Salcombe which provides launching at all states of the tide for all trailable small craft.

The Harbour Authority operates a slipway hoist with a lifting capacity of 10 tonnes. For further information contact the Harbour Office. Boats wishing to scrub their hull should contact the Harbour Office to book a lift. To minimise pollution within the Site of Special Scientific Interest scrubbing can only take place over the grid at Batson.

Salcombe has many small shops selling food, including pasties. It does not have a supermarket but does have a butcher, baker and greengrocer that can meet most needs. A Pharmacy can be found in Fore Street, and a Post Office at the Spar shop on Loring road. There are ample excellent restaurants and pubs, and banks Lloyds and Cashzone that have cashpoints.


A full range of supermarkets required for deep provisioning will be found at Kingsbridge.
There is a choice of chandlers in the area, and a wide range of Marine Services available that can cater to a wide variety of repairs and engineering, both mechanical and electronic, as well as rigging and sail work. Regular buses run to Kingsbridge, or ferries when the tide permits. From there, connections can be made to mainline trains at Totnes, Dartmouth, Exeter and Plymouth.

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