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.