Milford Haven to Bangor (Norn Iron)

When tide timings dictate a 3am departure, the joy is unbounded. When it is dictated after a 5am start the prior day and a fairly uncomfortable trip, plus some anchoring fun, it is even better. The joys of boating. The alarm was unwelcome but we put the kettle on and got the boat ready. Leaving Milford in the pitch darkness means being glued to the FLIR (Forward Looking Infra Red) image on the screen to see any nasty pot markers lurking around. At 3am after little sleep it does focus the mind and make you wake up pretty quickly.

Soon we got back into the night routine of FLIR, plotter and radar images on the three screens. We took a bit of fair tide with us as we went west towards St David's head. (Insomniacs who listen to the BBC shipping forecast will recognise the name). On the way we pass Skomer, the island that is a haven to loads of puffins in the breeding season, ie now. As it was dark we could only admire their antics on the FLIR, but this poor quality video (taken on a phone camera from the pilothouse screen, the real image is way better) shows just how many birds were out and about hunting for food:

You could almost feel sorry for the sand eel population. We rounded St David's head at just about the right time to take the changing tide north with us so made good progress. The big firing range in Cardigan Bay was not operating (we always check that one!) so a straight line course to Northern Ireland was possible. One long long leg of the passage on the same bearing. The sea was rather nice by now, a gentle wind on the beam and the waves it induced were pretty small, the stabilisers laughed them off. 

There was a fair bit of commercial traffic but amazingly we didn't need to alter course once, everything was on a track to miss us by at least a nautical mile and a half:

We were pretty tired so the off watch person was very focussed on sleeping. The crew was a little more successful than the captain in doing that but neither of us managed a proper snooze, most annoying. As we headed further up the Irish sea, we didn't even have any close encounters with the many ferries heading to and from Dublin. Quite amazing really, we were in our own little bubble, listening to the radio via the satellite TV dome. The routine of "on watch, engine checks, pump some fuel from the storage tanks through the filter into the supply tank, try to sleep" was followed all day. It got interrupted by tea and food deliveries but not much more. 

Here is the pretty simple route we took north to the Dublin area:

when the weather decided that there ought to be some showers. We saw plenty of very short lived rainbows but only captured one poor picture:

Once you get to Dublin, it you've timed things properly, you can enjoy about 12 hours of a fair tide, ie tide going with you north. We just about managed that, probably 45 minutes too late but not bad considering the length of the trip. The overnight passage towards Northern Ireland was uneventful, except we were both still struggling to sleep when off watch.

Daybreak was lovely and welcome:

Passing Portaferry we were treated to a rain shower and a view through the pilothouse side window of some serious fire with a massive plume of smoke heading over towards our track:

As you can see, the camera decided to focus on our wet window, not the fire. Luckily the thick black smoke was dissipating a bit by the time we had to pass through it. As we approached the Copeland Islands the tide had turned against us and as it runs very hard, we opted to go around the outside of the islands rather than fight through the inshore passage. Both are slow against the tide but one is very slow. At least this gave us the opportunity to photo the lighthouse on Mew Island, out first to add to the gallery this year:

Here is the rest of the route as we headed into Bangor:

We were very happy when we called them around 8am and they said they had a berth for us, no need to anchor up and wait for one to become free.  So, around twenty-nine and a half hours after leaving the Milford anchorage, we tied up, made breakfast and felt pretty wrung out. Despite that, it was great to be in Bangor. The trip was pretty quick and drama free. We like trips like that.

The boat behaved well, that pesky flybridge throttle button worked first push as we approached the marina and took control from above. The only thing we needed to do was tighten up the stern gland a bit as following the run it was dripping too frequently. Not too urgent a job.

Penarth to Milford Haven, a less than lovely first trip of the season

The one weather window that looked favourable for a run up the Irish sea meant we had to leave Penarth early morning and push into the NW'ly wind all the way to Milford Haven. There we planned to anchor up and wait for the tides to head north. 

The marina was pretty quiet at 5:15am as we headed out into Cardiff Bay:

We were not as quiet. The big John Deere main engine is very quiet when ticking over at marina speed but for some odd reason, the throttle / gear controllers were squealing despite working perfectly. All was well until we took over control from the flybridge. We'd had issues before when it would take several button pushes to engage properly. It had worked perfectly on our test runs around the bay during the winter and very recently but today, a whole new and different irritant!

We headed into the 5:30 barrage lock, with all three control heads squealing nicely. We apologised to the yacht in there with us about the noise and headed out to sea for the first time in several months, following our rather truncated summer trip last year:

The timing was good - as we headed out into the channel that leads to the lock and Cardiff commercial docks, a big guy was heading in:

Being in the narrow channel at the same time as him would not have been advisable!

The start of the trip was pretty good. No rain and we were sheltered by the land from what the sporty NW wind could do. Patrick and Kylie looked pretty happy, even if  poor Patrick is showing his age by going nicely grey, in a distinguished penguin sort of way:

We wondered if Kylie turned her back on the old guy as she still looks pretty young. Harsh considering how long they've been together.

As we passed Barrybados and headed towards Swansea, so the shelter from the land decreased and it got bumpier. Looking at the horizon to avoid seasickness is a good idea that the furry stowaways adopted quite quickly:

As we pushed our way through the short wavelength and quite steep waves being produced by the wind over tide conditions we kept washing the anchor. Yes, the bow of the Nordhavn is a long long way above the waterline. Work it out. We spotted that the HUGE Nordhavn 55 folks Alex and Gisele had left Weymouth and according to Marine Traffic, were on a pretty sporty run to Halifax in Canada:

We sent them a message wishing them a good trip and hoped they had topped up with fuel and food.

To the east of Milford Haven there is a firing range. Despite doing this trip many times, we've only seen it active once and familiarity had bred contempt so the captain hadn't even checked the firing times. Guess what, they called us to say they were active and we had to divert around the range area - see the odd "bulge" in what would have been a straight line track to Milford entrance:

What looks like a little detour on the image actually added around 90-120 minutes to our journey and even worse, took us further south so we then had to head back directly into the wind again with less shelter from the land. We were so happy. Even happier when the best anchorage spot off Dale had a couple of yachts in it. We tried one location, dragged and headed further into the estuary, Sandy Haven Bay, where we finally anchored, all alone. 

The flybridge throttle/gear controller misbehaved once more and the captain captured the error code on the system which reported a "short circuit" in the controller's push button. Only it wasn't. Great end to a bumpy, diverted 14 hour first trip of the season. Things can only get better.

We took careful note of where the pot marker buoys were ready for our departure the next morning, checked the engine which was happy but had burped out some coolant (the pre-departure top up had added a bit too much) and fell on some food. Sleep was going to be short.