Dun Laoghaire to Penarth

Once more the weather forecasts and tides were not happy bedfellows. As we were in no particular rush to get back to Penarth we had thought that we could find a suitable weather window between the string of low pressure systems to get ourselves to Milford Haven. Well, there was something that was suitable but the "window" and the optimum tide times for the trip were wildly different. Grr. To add to the fun, trying to optimise the tides would mean arriving off Milford around 4am. Not a problem but the forecast had thick fog then together with a force 5 rapidly increasing to 6 SW airflow. How you get the thick fog and a strong breeze seems so unfair. 

Going into Milford with the radar isn't an issue. Avoiding the many pot markers as we head to anchor off Dale is trickier as thick fog renders the FLIR camera almost useless. Getting one wrapped around the prop in thick fog and darkness or even around a stabiliser would be very messy indeed.  So, plan B was hatched. We would leave Dun Laoghaire to take a favourable tide around St David's head and turn to head up the Bristol Channel before the wind really picked up. The further we go up the channel, the better the shelter would be and later on, the wind was going to drop again. This meant two compromises - around St David's Head would be bumpy (wind over tide F5 to 6) and we would have to push the tide heading up towards Cardiff, slowing down too so we didn't arrive at low water. Far from ideal given the strength of the tides up there but it was the only weather break we could see in the longer term forecasts.

We duly left Dun Laoghaire in benign conditions around mid-day on Sunday. We are a small speck on the harbour webcam:

There were plenty of local yachts around enjoying a late season sail and making us dodge around them. The sunny weather departed as we passed Muglins lighthouse off Dalkey:

which is not one of the prettiest that we've seen:

Once into the Irish Sea proper, the sea calmed down a bit, the sun tried again and the views improved a lot, although they were of open sea mainly:

Our route to St Davids took us across the tidal flow at a gentle angle so we'd calculated a course to steer that would let the South West going tide carry us down the Irish coast and then when the tide turned, the NE going tide would push us more across to Wales giving us a better angle to the SWly wind induced waves, allowing the stabilisers to counteract them better.  Only some shipping messed up that plan and we had to give up our nice angle to the building wave patterns. Dodging the shipping made things bumpier later on and caused this strange looking route showing the effects of tide and avoiding the big guys:

We arrived off St David's in the dark and the sea was pretty much as expected - a bit like a washing machine. Lots of pitching and odd wave patterns. Plenty of spray and the boat was being pushed around nicely. All very safe and well within the capabilities of a boat designed to make open ocean passages but a roller coaster ride for the humans on board. Partick the penguin took it all in his stride of course. Proper salty old sea-penguin. As we approached Milford Haven and could turn more to the east, so things settled down a lot and the stabilisers were sorting our a way nicer ride for us. The Ferry from Pembroke was departing, heading to Ireland. No picture as it was foggy but had we been able to see her, this is the "beauty" in all her glory:

They called us and asked if "red to red" was OK (ie passing port side to port side). They were assuming that we would turn to head into Milford, they didn't look at our destination (Cardiff, or GB CDF) on  our AIS data. When we confirmed that red to red was fine, they then warned us that the visibility inside Milford Haven was down to 25 metres in some areas. So glad we were not planning to head in and anchor, avoiding pot markers would have been mainly down to luck. We were happy not to test ours and we'd headed well offshore passing Milford as between Skokholm and the mainland, we've seen plenty of pots before.

As we began pushing the strong tides heading up the Bristol Channel so the fog became more patchy and a nice pod of dolphins came to play. That always makes the day look better and the crew did her usual cries of encouragement thing as they jumped clear of the water and played in our bow wave. Hard to get a decent photo or video though:

As expected we made slow progress into the tide, seeing that you are doing 2.9 knots over the ground does become a bit disheartening! We'd dropped the rpm to around 1450 from the earlier 1650 used all the way to Milford, just so we had a bit more water when we arrived in the Cardiff area and so we could take advantage of a bit of the flood tide for the final couple of hours:

The closer we got to Cardiff the less and less appealing the water was. Instead of the crystal clear blue stuff we've been cruising in all summer "up north", we had a brown silty muddy mess around us:

You can see how it resembles mud soup. Lovely. Luckily we don't suck in cooling sea water for our main engine - that stuff must wear out impellers and pump housings / faceplates rather quickly.

Here is the rest of our course, showing the long slow haul up the Bristol Channel to Cardiff:

We go away for a few months and they change things. The Aberthaw power station landmark is slowly being demolished and the big chimney has gone:

As we approached Penarth pier and seafront, a local photographer who has taken some great images of us before was out and about. He captured the muddy water and quite distinctive light conditions looking out to the islands:

Then as as we headed towards the Barrage locks:

Slightly fuzzy picture - it was taken at a very long range. We had to mess around a bit waiting for the lock time but were given "lock no 2" for the 6:45pm inbound lock by the Barrage Control guy. We duly tied up in the lock and waited. And waited, then waited some more. Just before 7 we finally called them to ask if we were waiting on another inbound boat or if there was a problem. The problem was that the barrage team had just changed shift and nobody seemed to mention that we were in the lock and waiting. A look out of the office windows would have spotted us but.... 

We had quite a while sitting like this:

then were let into the bay. A run up and down in the fresh water area behind the barrage let us exercise the wing engine and flush out the salt water sitting inside the cooling system from the last time it was used, heading into Dun Laoghaire. We also gave the main engine a good burn to help clear some carbon from the piston rings etc. That is why we have the odd squiggles in our final track:

We were very happy to berth in our spot after a tiring 32 hour door to door run. Some calm and pleasurable, some pretty rough, some very slow progress then an odd 20 minutes waiting in the barrage lock. The systems were shut down for the last time this cruising season after we'd covered around 1800 nautical miles since leaving Penarth.

Maintenance News:

As the main engine was nice and hot, we pumped out the engine oil ready to do an oil and filter swap the next day. We were not keen enough that evening to wash off the salt, that waited for the morning.