Motoring North

A very uneventful day. I had a call between 10 and 11 to discuss funding for Gaelic in Helensburgh.

Beforehand, we walked into town and bought bread and smoked salmon and scallops and samfire. I don't remember every having a choice of three shops to buy scallops in, and not all the fishmongers were even open yet. The smoked salmon was smoked on the premises.

My call didn't last the full 40 minutes so we got away a little early. That meant some foul tide past Ireland's Eye but then we motored all day. We dodged around the back of a yacht which was just managing to sail, more to be friendly than for safety.

Then pretty much nothing happened other than food until we were entering Ardglass harbour about midnight.

We had the locally smoked salmon with creamy goats cheese for lunch and I cooked the scallops with samfire and onions in lemon and white wine and served it over spaghetti. Lovely.

We edged in looking for the lit channel. Alison remembered there being a cardinal to look out for and spotted it just in time. 1 m clearance is ok at 1 knot.

The end of the visitor pontoon has no fingers so we could come alongside quite easily.

For once, we had a small whisky before turning in.

Hopefully, we will get a nice beam reach to Peel tomorrow. 

Shore Day

 The wind was due to be N F5 and falling today but dropping to nothing tomorrow morning. So we decided to stay in Howth today and have a long day motoring to Ardglass tomorrow.

In fact, it never dropped all day. It brought a lovely cool breeze into the town but there were white horses out in the bay. Robinetta would have had problems making progress north straight into it.

We had a late cooked breakfast of bacon and egg.

When we were in Howth in 2016, nearing the end of our circumnavigation of Ireland, we did the fine walk along the cliff. We never went to the touristy bit by the train station.

They told us in the marina office that there is a new Tesco just a bit further on, and we needed a few things so we went that way after a quick detour to check out the food outlets in the other direction as we thought it would be nice to eat out tonight.

That led to a delicious pomegranate sorbet for me and a latte for Alison. Her order got mixed up and she got an iced one by mistake. She enjoyed it.

The Tesco is a big one and, in common with every supermarket we have ever been to in Ireland, has some local produce. We bought a few staples and will come back tomorrow morning for bread.

Then we headed back past the station and turned left.

Between Tesco and the station there is a Blues Café and a pub with a seafood bar. Beyond the station is a quay with a really good chandlery and around a dozen seafood restaurants and half a dozen fishmongers.

I was in heaven.

We went into the first fishmonger, not knowing there would be others! We bought a Red Mullet and got it cleaned and scaled and left it there to collect later. We wouldn't be eating out tonight, I would be cooking.

They had sole and gilthead bream and lots of other fish.

The middle of the quay has a working commercial boatyard. There was a large ship lifted out for maintenance. It only occupies 30 m of the quay but goes back a long way.

The end of the quay has tourist boat trip places and an open area where you can look out over the bay to Ireland's Eye. A busker was playing the the trombone to a recorded accompaniment. It's a delightful spot.

We went back to Robinetta and Alison did laundry while I had a go at patching Worm. She has damage to the floor plank that weeps.

Mid afternoon, I felt like a little trip to get a seafood snack and a drink would be nice. If we weren't going to eat out for dinner, we could at least sample the experience.

We looked in every restaurant. They were all either full or not very interesting, or both. It was really busy, with local families and international tourists.

We ended up at The Bloody Stream. The pub with a seafood bar. It was a good choice. I had a Guinness and Alison had a Bulmers and we shared a starter portion of mussels. The Bloody Stream is a real stream which now runs under the pub but it is said that it ran red with blood during the 12th century Norman invasion of Ireland.

Later that evening I cooked the Red Mullet for dinner. Lovely. 

Cruising under sail is not just about sailing.

I wish Scotland had somewhere with fish like this.

Another Long Day

It was busy at Pilot's Cove, about 6 yachts there when we arrived. We found a little hill to anchor on.

Nice views of Snowdonia but otherwise no prettier than many other places. But we are spoilt.

No view this morning. Misty and overcast.

Northerly winds mean a direct passage to the IoM is not a good idea. So we headed for Howth.

We did the cross tide planning as we had between the IoM and Be weaumaris. Keeping a record of the cross track error helps a lot.

One hour watches are working for us this year. The sea was calm enough for George to steer so it wasn't too tiring.

Holyhead/Dublin ferries passed us every few hours.

Got a small pod of common dolphins for company in the middle.

The wind was useful but we never turned the engine off.

Mid afternoon Alison noticed that the bilge pump hadn't gone on and there was a lot of water in the bilges. The float switch didn't seem to be working. Manual use of the electric pump was fine.

I replaced the 12 V feed to the float switch and that seemed to fix the problem.

From about 7pm the sea state got worse we changed to hand steering. The wind came and went.

From about 9pm it was much windier and bouncy. We reefed down to the first hoop and got the jib in. 

Reefing and shaking out reefs is working really well. Getting the jib in was difficult. We had to head downwind to get the jib in the lee of the mainsail.

Those last 2 hours were a bit lively.

We gott to Howth at low water and it was getting dark. We found the buoyed entrance to the marina. The channel is really narrow between the hammerheads and the mud.

We spotted a space on a hammerhead and got ropes and fenders ready, planning to turn around and go in port side to.

But there was no space to turn around without ploughing the mud. It took a long time to get the bow around but I managed eventually. 

The dashed line heading north in the photo is just the GPS finding itself. But you can see I had a few goes turning round. The least depth under the keel was -0.8m

We tied up on the hammerhead about 23:00.

I am very pleased with my cross-tide navigation. Both IoM to Menai and Pilots Cove to here.

Setting off again

With the Sea Fest over it was time to head out. Many of the other participants left yesterday, while the Dublin OGA contingent were planning to go to Conwy, so left as soon as the lock began operating to take the tide through the Swellies.

Our plan was to head for Howth, via an overnight anchorage at Llanddwyn Island just past the Caernarvon Bar. This meant leaving the Marina at about 15:00, on free flow. I called up on Channel 80 to ask for a bridge lift at 14:30 as we wanted to fill up with diesel and water while in the lock.

The timing worked perfectly, and we were motoring out of the lock dead on 15:00, with full tanks and cans. The tide was running quite strongly in the direction we wanted to go, so we only needed the engine on low revs. We got the main sail up, and motor sailed when we could, but the buoyed channel twisted and turned across the apparently wide open water, so turning off the engine was never a possibility.

The shape of the Caernarvon Bar changes every year, making the charts things to treated with caution. Only the sequence of buoys stays the same, their positions must be followed in reality, not on paper. The colours faded to black in the bright sunshine, but the shapes made their type obvious. The fact that the direction of buoyage changes just off Caernarvon itself also needs to be taken into account.

Despite all the potential problems we safely navigated our way out from between the sandbanks, and turned towards the anchorage. There were over 10 yachts already there, and we had to go slightly out of the most sheltered area but there was enough space. We anchored in 3m beneath the keel with 20m of chain, at 17:30 after a slightly nerve wracking passage from Port Dinorwic.

Up the mast

We moved Robinetta to the work area this morning and I got my things together and got into to cage to be lifted up by the fork lift truck.

Replacing the broken strop was reasonably straightforward. I decided a bow shaped shackle would work better than the straight one I had brought and the retaining piece was missing a screw. Alison sent me up the extra bits using the spare halyard.

But we got a bit tangled with the halyard and Alison decided the block on the gaff span was too worn and wanted to replace it, which meant rethreading most of the peak halyard. That done, it was looking good. I moved some of the other strops a little to reduce chafe.

I got the cage raised a bit more to work on the VHF antenna. I fitted a rubber duck for the AIS in Ullapool. It was completely broken and rusted so I just removed it. I took the cable off the main antenna and it didn't look great either. So hopefully the new antenna and cable will restore the radio performance.

The new antenna has a windex. I was worried it might not fit but it was high enough up to clear the top of the mast.

So we could use the same bracket. I got the antenna fitted and got the windex no-go zone arms roughly even port and starboard and tightened their screw.

Then it was time to run the cable down, taping the anchor light cable to the VHF cable and putting both in the trunking that goes past the hounds.

I made sure the cable attachment to the antenna was sealed with self amalgamating tape.

Running the cables is pretty simple now, the trunking makes things much easier.

I had brought black and white tape up with me. I used white everywhere except the antenna bracket and put some extra white over the anchor light fitting so the white at the top of the mast goes all the way up now.

I had to get the cage lowered a metre at a time to get the old cable cut off and the new one into the trunking and then taped down the shrouds.

Then it was taping the bottom by the bulwarks and threading the new cable through the deck fitting.

Alison ran the new cable in the cabin and got rid of the old ones.

Now we just need to fit the new plug!

By then it was time for most of the boats to leave. We were staying another night but most wanted to leave on the tide, either through the Swellies, or out to Carnarvon Bay. We walked down to say farewell and take pictures.

After that I was tired and hungry and thirsty. We had a light lunch and then just chilled until it was time for Mary to go home. I helped her get her luggage to the bus stop and made a short trip to the shop.

At 4pm it was time for the last music of the weekend. A male voice choir / group singing mostly in Welsh with some standards in English. Very sweet sounding.

After that we went up to the Chinese takeaway and brought dinner back and listened to the Proms.

Port Dinorwic

 

A lovely restful day chatting with old friends and making new ones.

Destination for the weekend reached

We needed to head down the Menai Straights to reach Port Dinorwic, which meant going through the Swellies between the bridges. This would not be possible until 12:15, at slack water. That meant a much appreciated lazy morning. We had anchored in 3m beneath the keel, but with a rise of tide of 7m we had let out 30m of chain. Hauling that up and plotting our course between the Menai Strait bridges were the only outstanding tasks before 11:00 when we left.

The weather was lovely, blue sky with a light northerly breeze. With the main sail out of action we never even thought about raising the staysail, and just motored through without any drama, encountering 5 yachts coming the other way.

Neither of us had been to Port Dinorwic Marina, and Julian could not find it on the chartplotter, just the tidal basin with pontoons just past it. He had set this as the destination. Having read the pilot I knew we were looking for the Vaynol Dock entrance, but the two were too close together to matter when setting the course. Julian had just realised that where he was heading was full of motor boats and no masts when I spotted the masts we were looking for. We were slightly past the Vaynol entrance at this point and turning back showed we had quite a lot of tide in our favour.

We made it in, and tied up between the lock gates for half an hour while the marina staff decided the best place to put us. Mary found us there, and came aboard for the last few metres of the journey under the road bridge between the two halves of the marina. This was very slow to raise!

We were moored alongside Laura with the engine off at 13:55. Our long trip south had been successfully completed.