Penarth (Cardiff) to Dale (Milford Haven)

Oh yes, the first proper trip of the year. Always a bit exciting / worrying. This one had the added benefit of needing a 3:15 alarm so that we could leave Penarth marina and get to the Cardiff Bay barrage in time for the 4am lock out to sea. The one good thing was that we were pretty sure we would have the lock to ourselves and could go the easy "starboard side to" in there.

We reckon that we woke up the harbour guy in the control office when we called just before 4am. This is how the three locks and lifting bridges look at silly o'clock in the morning from the flybridge of a Nordhavn (oh, it had just stopped raining too, thanks Wales):

and this is how the bridge looks when lifted to let us into lock 3:

Almost ethereal really.

Despite the lack of sleep, we got into the lock and out of it with no drama. The FLIR really comes into its own leaving the dimly lit lock into the pitch black of the outer harbour.

After retrieving the fenders and lines then stowing them, the crew organised some tea and breakfast then curled up to sleep. The Captain tried to follow the right course and avoid anything floating in the water. The tide turned as planned and gave us a fast run for the first few hours down to Swansea with the big Lugger purring along nicely:

At 1550 rpm with a very full load on board (full fuel, just over 5 metric tons and about 3/4 full of fresh water thanks to a miscalculation on our consumption) we were doing around 6.3 knots through the water. The maths says that is about 1.4 litres per nautical mile or about 3.2 nautical miles per gallon for old UK people. For old UK landlubbers, that is more like 3.7 statute  (land) miles per gallon. Not quite as impressive as most cars these days but most cars don't weigh around 40 tons. 

The start of the trip was nice and calm, as the dawn arrived we were treated to a seascape and sky of unending grey:

as captured by the CCTV system. Still, you can see how flat the sea was until our wake disturbed it.

The forecast had fog patches in it with very poor visibility in them. The reality had very big fog banks with very poor visibility so you are not going to get any more pictures of the scenery we passed on this trip. You can have a look at how we saw the world though:

The radar gave us a way better impression of what was around and for the land based folks who have never seen what a racon does, here is an example. The blob in the middle of the left hand side of the radar screen is a buoy in the Bristol Channel that the big guys use for their navigation:

That buoy has a racon on it which picks up our radar stransmission and does this:

Kind of an exhibitionist amongst buoys really. The sort of thing that would get you locked up if you did it on land. For the non boating folks who are mad enough to be interested in such things, have a look at weblink.

The fog banks were pretty big, and the sea picked up a bit too - a gentle 2m swell from the SW and some wind induced waves on top of it which was all on the port bow. Nothing dramatic, just enough to slow us up by around 0.2 knots at the same engine rpm. Approaching Milford Haven, we heard the port control radio some tankers and tell them that their pilot would be delayed owing to poor visibility in the harbour area - basically they stopped moving the ships around. As we arrived, the fog had not cleared much and a rather strange guy in a fast fishing boat who was entering the harbour before us called port control to ask if there was a speed limit in force. They said that no, there is no statutory speed limit. The guy then commented that he had less that 100 metres visibility in the eastern approach channel and so was "advised to follow the collision regulations and maintain a safe speed for the visibility". OK, he was "advised" rather firmly and finally dropped his speed from around 18 knots to something more suitable.

The eastern entrance on this chart is via the quaintly named Sheep and Rat buoys:

We headed in, with almost zero visibility but two rather excellent Furuno radars to guide us. The anchorage off Dale is shown on the above chart, on the north west of the harbour, the light blue area. As you can see, it isn't far from the entrance but as we approached it someone took pity on us as the fog lifted. Yes, minor miracles do happen. We found a suitable depth, dropped the anchor and relaxed a litte. Just to prove that the visibility at Dale was better, we were sent this image from the Dale sailing club webcam of our arrival:

Kind of a spot the Nordhavn game. Why did we get the picture? Well, we had a stalker.... It would be wrong to tell you who it was in case you ever bump into them and find yourself questioning their sanity.

Dale is a bit of a rock and roll spot at anchor but we could not be bothered to deploy the flopper stopper rig as we had under 11 hours at anchor ahead of us. Sensible decision? Hard to tell, we were not thrown out of bed when the commercial guys were moving again but it wasn't the calmest of nights.

The trip took us about 13 hours end to end, the majority of it in fog, the rest in grey gloomy stuff. No maintenance dramas to report, sorry.