Graham, I was frankly startled to see the N Devon coast on your ‘wish list’, because from my own experience of and interest in it (and excluding the Taw/Torridge estuary, including Bideford, Appledore and Instow, which is quite different), it would be difficult to imagine a less hospitable - to the small boat sailor - stretch of coastline! 'Beetling cliffs by the surging main', high cliffs or tumbling promontories above savagely rocky foreshores forming miles of potential lee shore hazards, rolling swells generated by prevailing westerlies across miles of open sea, very few harbours or havens, occasional bays with some sand at high or low tide but not both, huge tides (12+ metres), rips and overfalls off headlands... I could go on! Imagine the Cardigan coastline without the refuge of the Teifi estuary and much more savage where land meets sea.
There is some small boat sailing at Ilfracombe and Watersmouth: I don’t think they go far. To the East there is Lynmouth - tiny harbour with a few lobster-fishing boats, and a handful of dayboats (on precarious, drying out moorings) which almost never seem to go sailing. To the West, don’t go anywhere near the leeshore hazards of Woolacombe, Croyde,Braunton Sands. Across Bideford Bay is Clovelly - a 1 in 3 street down to a rocky foreshore. Further West is Hartland, a graveyard for shipping for centuries, Bude - a bit of intrepid sailing there nowadays? Not until you get to Padstow and the Camel estuary does recreational sailing flourish - because it can.
The DCA do go occasionally to Lundy Island. The weather, tides etc have to be exactly right. There is no Lundy harbour as such, just a jetty where it often isn’t possible to land. I think it is regarded as a sort of scaled down version of sailing a Wayfarer to Norway. Just consider that the former working sailing boats of this area - the Bristol Channel pilot cutters - were among the toughest and most seaworthy (and most beautiful) of all UK coastal craft, because they had to be. Not recreational sailing, that.
My credentials for these comments are having grown up through my teens near Lynmouth. I was mad about boats, but sailing just wasn’t feasible on that most beautiful of coasts - we went to Poole to sail! I did do a bit of kayaking, which was a crazy thing to do there (back to that blissful ignorance of danger thing): the local fishermen, when they came across me, almost begged me to take my cockleshell (as they regarded it) ashore and stay there. I was a kid, and they seemed to feel a sense of responsibility, lifeboats (at Ilfracombe and Minehead) being miles away!
So I recommend that N Devon comes OFF your (or anyone else’s) cruising ground list, because it really isn’t one.