Getting to Caernarvon

Felix joined us on Wednesday night. He wanted to try small yacht sailing, having learned in a dinghy, and only sailed much larger yachts than Robinetta and got in touch with us via the Cruising Association. We should have got an early night, but what with eating and showing him the boat we did not manage to get to bed until 23:00.

The alarm went at 03:35, and we managed to get off the berth by 04:05. There was good moonlight, but picking our way past the moorings, and putting up sail in the dark took longer than expected, and we did not managed to get out of the harbour, with the no 2 jib and a reefed main until 04:50.

The waves outside the sheltered harbour came as a bit of a shock, and we had to tack towards South Stack. Julian's planning had made him want to reach South Stack by 05:00, which was obviously not going to happen, but apparently 06:00 was still good, although later would not be! We kept the engine on and motor sailed to keep the speed up and let Robinetta sail closer to the wind.

We had heard a ferry announce its presence at South Stack to the Holyhead coastguard, so we were not surprised to see one. I tacked to avoid it (I thought) and got five hoots for my trouble. It was much closer than I thought! I quickly went back on my previous course and we stayed well clear.

We were passed South Stack by 06:00 as required, and met none of the dreaded overfalls. We had daylight, and switched off the running lights, but kept the engine on. The sky had clouded over as the sun rose, but it stayed dry from above, although a rather large wave did manage to splash into the cockpit and make the pump run as well as drenching Julian on the helm. Luckily he was wearing full oilies against the cold!

Broad reaching down the west coast of Anglesey

We were now on a very broad reach, with the waves rolling in from behind. The motion was a bit too much for Felix, who was sick a couple of times and he had to go below for a while. Once he felt a little better I made porridge, and he managed to keep a couple of mouthfuls down, but was still fragile.

We reached the Caernarvon Bar safe water mark at 10:20, pretty near perfect timing, and then picked our way along the channel across the bar. Holyhead marina had printed out a chartlet with the new channel marker positions and given it to us, which made our eyeball navigation a lot less fraught than it might have been. We were an hour and a half before high water Caernarvon, and never had less than 4.4m beneath the keel.

The engine went off for ten minutes after we got through the narrows, and soon we were at Caernarvon itself.

Approaching Caernarfon

Caernarfon Castle

We lowered sail to go into the Victoria Dock at dead on high water. We were moored up by 11:55, ready to spend a lazy afternoon ashore, after 8 hours sailing (or motor sailing if you prefer).