Peel to Portpatrick

Peel Castle

We spent a lazy morning in Peel waiting for the flap gate. We expected it to drop around 2pm but the Harbour Master said it would be more like 2:45 because the harbour was full of water after the rain.

We bent the main sail on and went up to the Co-op for croissants and pain chocolate for a late breakfast. I don't think I'm losing weight this trip!

Over the winter I bought a couple of corner reflectors to hoist at night or in fog. Robinetta is too small and too wooden to have much of a radar cross-section. Most reflectors are rubbish but at least the old fashioned corners at least work at both marine radar frequencies and having one each side of the mast should provide a corner to most radars. We didn't manage to fit them for the trip over from Liverpool.

We had time now and Alison wanted to check the peak halyard mast strops so I hauled her up the mast and she seized a new eye to the port aft shroud and ran light halyards to it and to the eye already on the front starboard shroud. We can also use these for courtesy flags and bunting.

A quick walk around the outside of the castle, fee paying at the Harbour Office and tea and a cake at the Manannan Centre and we were ready to leave. There were lots of boats waiting for the bridge lift. We got the call and pottered down, getting the bow sprit out and bending the No 1 jib on.

Outside, there was more wind than we had feared and we raised full sail and set course on a gentle broad reach. The wind filled and before long we were creaming along at 5 knots. Robinetta was loving it and so were we. We had a perfect sail until about 7pm.

As evening drew on the wind dropped. There was still enough to sail, but our arrival time had slipped from 11pm to 2am. That would be OK but the worst thing was that the wind was no longer strong enough to keep the boat stable against the swell. The sails banged about. These are the conditions when rigs are most easily damaged. We reluctantly took the main down and motored the rest of the way.

Sun setting over Northern Ireland

We did get the radar reflectors hoisted but several of the plastic corners fell off. I don't think they are meant to be assembled and disassembled often. We really want to keep them flat when we aren't using them.

We had good tidal assist for most of the trip and managed 6 knots SOG now and then even under engine and stay sail.

Dusk lasted a long time and there was still light in the west as we neared Portpatrick around midnight. We slipped into the inner harbour and past Molly Cobbler who had arrived a little earlier. Mary had left Whitehaven at 2:30 am and got Portpatrick about 7:30pm after waiting in East Tarbert Bay and anchored to wait for the tide around the Mull.

Portpatrick has an ingenious scheme of ropes anchored to the top and bottom of the wall with fenders free to run up and down them with the tide. You can tie a rope loop round and slide up and down with the fenders. Unfortunately they are not well maintained and we had to reinforce one of the mooring lines with our own ropes to be secure.

We crawled into bed around half-past midnight.