Scilly Islands to Neyland (Milford Haven)

All good things must come to an end sometime, so they say. We felt a little like that leaving the Scilly islands after such a great time but, it had to be done. So, we picked a nice settled time to leave - the wind didn't get above 10 knots until we were about 10 miles off the Welsh coast and there was only a small swell left from the previous strong NW'ly winds. Nothing to worry the Nordhavn though.

So, we slipped our mooring in New Grimsby Sound mid afternoon to optimise the tides for the run up to Milford Haven. Navigation is pretty simple, leave the sound, avoid the kettle bottom rock, hang a right and steer 027 degrees for about 120 miles and assuming the tides do what you have planned you pitch up in the Milford entrance. Nothing to it really,

The last lingering sight of the Scilly Islands was Round Island and its lighthouse, previously seen from the other side when we visited St Martins:

The route avoids the traffic separation scheme lanes between the islands and the UK mainland, just missing the top of them. However, the lanes are of course a pinch point and so we had to dodge a couple of big guys who were heading south into their proper lane. This chap caused us to divert a little:

In theory we had right of way and could have caused him to alter course but sometimes it isn't worth pushing things..... As we headed away from the Cornish coast and lost sight of land, we witnessed another spectacular sunset. The Irish Ferries ship "Oscar Wilde" managed to get in the way and look a bit mean and moody too:

Overnight, we had the normal fishing boats to avoid but not much else around us. It was only really dark out to sea for about 5 hours and the crew was very happy when just before 5am during her watch, a pod of dolphins came to play and stayed around for about 45 minutes. At the time she was trying to avoid a guard ship that was positioned over an exposed undersea cable and was most annoyed that she had to keep popping back into the pilot house to check the course was OK. Luckily the dolphins didn't get upset that she was temporarily absent.

The trip ended with several more dolphins, some puffins and, sure enough, arrival off Milford pretty much as planned. For those interested in the tidal effects, here is our track after steering a constant course bar a little ship dodging. The nice S shape is kind of cute and equates to a 5 mile tidal push away from our straight line route and then back again. Had it been spring tides, it would have been significantly more of course:

As we arrived in Milford, the pilot boat was returning to the harbour and came very close so the crew could take pictures of us. Plaid Cymru checking up on incomers perhaps? (for non UK folk or the politically apathetic, see website). As we headed up to Neyland so it started to drizzle and get gloomy. Such a shame after a gloriously sunny and calm trip.

Still, the berth had 32 amp power and so a happy crew got the washing machine and tumble dryer busy. In the Scilly islands we didn't run them to save water (our water maker on board isn't commissioned to save all the regular maintenance and use they need!) That wasn't a problem though, after 4 days with 3 people on board, followed by 4 days with just the two of us, we still had 1/3 of our tank capacity left and hadn't gone smelly.....

Maintenance news:

No, nothing to report. Overall a 20 hour run (Neyland is quite a long way from the Estuary entrance) and the log which had decided to stop en route to the Scilly Islands, decided to work again without the captain removing the log impeller to clean it and causing stress to the crew. (Stress as removing it leaves a hole in the bottom of the boat and a "little" sea water tends to come in before the replacement plug seals it up again!)