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.