Bangor to Neyland

This was a tricky trip to plan. The most autumnal weather had really set in and so we were getting short periods of reasonable weather (low wind speeds) interspersed with way longer periods of strong SW'ly stuff. That drags up some nice big waves in the Irish Sea and we had to travel the full length of it. At our normal cruise speed, the trip to Milford Haven takes around 33 hours. Getting a favourable tide around the coast of Northern Ireland and all the way down to the Dublin area is do-able thanks to the timing of the tidal direction changes. Typically, you then end up fighting the rather strong tides around St David's Head (the bottom sticking out western bit of Wales for those with geography as bad as the captain's). 

We saw one promising weather window with some strong W'ly / NW'ly winds to begin with (when we would be relatively close to the Irish coast and so a bit sheltered) and then decaying wind strength until a strong SW'ly picked up. The idea was to leave to take advantage of the nice tide around the Irish coast, live with a bumpy bit as we peeled away from it and run the boat faster than normal to get a fair tide at St David's and arrive before the nasty windy weather appeared again. The fun bit was that most of the weather sources said this would be possible, just not the UK Met Office and their shipping / inshore waters forecasts. For once, we believed all the others and headed off around 8:30 in the morning, a civilised departure for a change.

It was a lovely start to the day indeed:

as we headed around the coast, inside the Copeland Islands and enjoyed lots of tidal help for a calm first part of the journey:

As we left the shelter of the land, it was a little bumpier but still glorious weather (well, from inside the pilothouse anyway):

The wind made it a bit chilly outside so we kept the windward door firmly closed. Well out to sea we were being followed by a ship called Elbcarrier. They seemed to like chasing us down and the AIS system was showing a closest point of approach as something way way too small for comfort:

It varied from 0 to about 150 meters as our heading was gently changing thanks to the stabilisers which were counteracting the waves nicely but making us wander as usual. We kept watching him / it (as they were misbehaving, they did not deserve a "her" for their ship) and did the "stand on vessel" thing of maintaining course and speed. Finally, just before we were going to call them to make sure that someone was awake and paying attention to their AIS and radar plots / alarms they made a late 8 degree course change, then a lot more and opened up a nice gap:

Over 500m eventually. We do wonder why they didn't just add a couple of degrees 10 mintues earlier rather than do the nautical equivalent of a handbrake turn. It was nice to see them pass us:

The rest of the route pretty much runs down the middle of the Irish Sea. So, you see nothing bar water and any other ships that are about. No yachts, no other motor boats, just a few commercial guys and the odd fishing boat.  We did, however, get some friendly Irish dolphins come and play.  Always a great distraction but sorry, no pics.  During the night watches, the starboard navigation light bulb decided to blow. Irrtating as that was the side that most of the ships coming up from the Atlantic would approach us on. Rather than try to tinker with it in the pitch black, the decision was to use the deck lights if necessary to add to the steaming light, AIS and our radar return. Oh for dual bulb fittings.

You can see a big gap in the route where we were too far from land to have our AIS signals picked up:

This tends to upset the folks who professionally stalk us (yes, you know who you are) but as it was during the night when the European people should have been sleeping, we don't think that it caused too much stress.

We had calculated that running the boat at around 1800 rpm (one of the happy speeds for the engine) which equates to about 7.4 knots with our current fuel load and a relatively clean bum should get us to St David's before the tide turned against us. Seeing the 13 - 14 litres per hour consumption compared to our normal 9 or so was strange:

For the tekkies who think that the engine is running cool at 65C, that happens when the second (higher temperature) thermostat in the system opens up. The running temperature drops from 70 something down to 65C or so, then climbs back up as the higher temperature thermostat closes again. You don't see it happen often running at lower rpm unless the keel cooler is badly fouled up.

Sure enough, and luckily for us, the Met Office forecast was out - predicting way stronger winds than we encountered. The timing to get to St David's worked out too and so we cut inshore of Skoholm, passing our favourite anchorage on the south side of Skomer:

We then had a little tide to push heading into Milford Haven. Sometimes things work out. This was a good "sometime" for it to happen. St Annes head was a welcome sight:

As it was approaching high water, there was plenty of commercial traffic entering and leaving Milford. When we entered, we stayed to the west, well out of the channels the large guys need. This did mean avoiding numerous pot markers both large and small. Dale Castle got closer than normal:

and the juxtaposition of old castle and modern navigation aids looks a bit strange:

A large tanker, Merbabu,  was being "encouraged" into place by three tugs who helped with the right angle turn needed at Dale roads:

We didn't want to cross the channel in front of them so we just did the marine equivalent of a circuit and bump whilst waiting, hence the strange AIS track for anyone who thought we had simply lost the plot:

  

In fairness we didn't get much sleep overnight and so our grasp on any plots was not great. 

We had to slow down again as the tugs gave the tanker a nice shove into her berth:

but then we happily sped up and berthed in Neyland, about 27.5 hours after leaving Bangor. It could have been closer to 27 without the tanker diversion.

For the maintenance and statistics types:

Maintenance involved replacing one navigation bulb. Not too tricky. The trip is about 195 nautical miles plus arond an hour inside Milford Haven to get up to Neyland. As an interesting exercise (for some), we worked out that running the boat harder (an extra 4 litres per hour which is a whopping 45% increase in fuel burn for a 16% increase in speed) actually burned an extra 45 to 50 litres over the entire trip. So, 45% extra burn per hour for a 16% speed through the water increase cost us a 15% additional fuel bill for the trip, The joy of tidal help. What we cannot turn into maths was the importance of getting into shelter before the wind picked up again. That is priceless. As we've said many times before, fuel costs even at 1800 rpm are not a big issue with a Nordhavn. Go slow, go economically.

The Neyland folks were as welcoming as ever although they did warm us that the royal Marines would be using the berth we were on from Monday. Maybe we need to move beforehand.

Finally, just to prove that odd boat names exist in Wales as well as in the Isle of Bute, a little Shetland was berthed nearby:

We don't know and don't want to know what is in the big black box on the foredeck......