I normally sleep well in Robinetta, but last night I kept waking up, and when I did I would go over in my mind exactly how we would get off the berth. We had been blown on to it, so I feared being lee shored. When the alarm went (another 05:00 wake up call) Julian and I discussed it while the kettle boiled. Springing off the bow and motoring backwards seemed the only way possible, and as soon as we stuck our heads into the cockpit and felt no wind at all everything seemed easier, and the plan worked like a charm. Julian did have to push the boat astern with his hand to stop their outboard from touching Robinetta, but that was our only contact with the three tightly packed boats. The owner of the inner most yacht, who had helped us moor, appeared on the pontoon and waved as we motored away.
We were out of the harbour by 05:50, heading into a gently rolling sea.
We needed to make 4 knots to reach Arbroath before the lock gates closed, and at first it did not look promising. Robinetta was making less than 3.5 knots as we headed towards St. Abbs head. Checking our tide charts later we realised that the tide was against us here as it ebbed out of the Forth. The light wind in the stay sail was just created by our forward motion, but as we cleared the headland the wind seemed to have some west in it, and the staysail started drawing.
Once we left St. Abbs head and its contrary tide behind our speed picked up a little, but the thought of trying to helm in a straight line for nearly 40nm with no aiming points for the first 20 had Julian deciding to put "George" to work, and as soon as he lashed the tiller pilot in place the trip became less daunting. It began to drizzle, but the wind also increased and we got the main sail up and see if it would help our speed. With the main, and no 1 jib we were motor sailing at 4.5 knots, and making Arbroath began to feel possible (we would have diverted to Anstruther which was a 10 mile shorter trip if we had to). The forecast was for variable winds, and we could not rely on our lovely breeze to stay for the whole trip, so the engine stayed on, as it helped bring the wind round enough to fill the sails.
We seemed to be making amazingly good time, until Julian had a look at his phone and discovered that it was an hour later than we thought. At some point in the morning our chart plotter has switched from BST to GMT. He tried to work out why, and discovered that we had our plotter set to "automatic" local time rather than BST. He thinks that a satellite update might have caused a reset. We were not too worried though. 15:30 for arrival at Arbroath was still plenty of time.
The drizzle was not constant, but the wind stayed with us until after lunch, sometimes bringing our speed up to 6 knots, at which point Julian throttled back on the engine. We were still making 5 knots when I went on watch (much easier when not helming as well), but after about 15 minutes George put himself on standby. I noticed immediately and reset him, and he worked throughout lunch before glitching to standby again. Another reset worked, but soon after he lost power totally.
Luckily we could see the Bell Rock by this point, so there was a point of reference to help with the steering. Then the lovely wind faded away, and we were down to the unassisted engine to get us the last 12 miles to Arbroath. A good aiming point appeared on the land, the engine was taking us along at 4 knots and we were well ahead of schedule....
Three days of early starts and long days had brought us 120 miles further north. We had been made welcome in all our stop overs, and seen some lovely scenery, but had it been a cruise? The rough overnight passages of our first two weekends northward bound seemed long ago. We had managed some sailing every day, and not been out after dark, so yes, we had been cruising for the first time in too long.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment