Ardrossan to Holyhead

The forecast had a few days of Northerly or North Westerly winds promised.  A rarity and way better for our trip south than the prevailing winds which are normally SW and so pretty much "on the nose" for the run down to Lands End where it can get wonderfully rough.  So, on the feeling that summer (such as it was) had finished, we decided to start the trek south.

After the Boatcraft guys had finished in the engine room, we checked the boat over and started stowing things away for a proper sea voyage again.  Trundling around inside the Mull of Kintyre is lovely and relatively sheltered and so we'd got into bad habits  -  not stowing things properly and not worrying about having kettles and coffee machines sitting on the worktop.  It is amazing how much stuff migrates out of lockers in a month and then has to go back into them although there doesn't seem to be any free space.

We had to wait in Ardrossan for the ferry to arrive:

Then another neat reversing job off the berth which the wind wanted us to marry or at least have a small affair with. This time we had the meerkat audience from the commercial boats in the harbour, not just the yottie lady. We escaped OK and headed out.  There were some chunky waves on our stern quarter even when sheltered by the Isle of Arran.  They slowly picked up as we headed south and out of the sheltered area.  Passing the oddly shaped Ailsa Craig, Patrick was intently looking for relatives:

Many people have offered comments on what the shape of the island reminds them of. You can think up your own:

No penguins were spotted though.  Just some sniffy dolphins who would not come and play.  We are looking forward to seeing some Plaid Cymru (Welsh equivalent of the SNP) dolphins soon who seem much friendlier.   Heading past Loch Ryan (Cairnryan, where the ferries to Northern Ireland leave from) we saw and then were overtaken by the one pleasure boat that we saw during the whole trip:

A serious Australian yacht called Sydney Rock being driven hard in the force 5 to 6 wind conditions. We now had the nice "wind over tide"  situation and so we slowed down by a couple of knots as we pushed a "springy"  tide which also whipped up bigger and steeper waves.  The "normal" 2 metre jobs that were coming from astern and trying to push us around became a little bigger with the odd one that reached about 3 metres.  We even managed to dip our anchor into the water whilst it was still on the bow roller. Easy enough in big head seas, less common in following ones.  The bigger waves were breaking under the boat too so we had a few "elevator" moments. Of course, the boat didn't think twice about all this.  The only evidence was the engine load which at fixed rpm varied from 37 to 56% as waves picked us up and pushed us forward or we had to climb the big ones.

What did this mean for us? -  well you just had to be a bit careful walking around in case a big "rogue" wave caused a sudden movement.  No problem though, the boat just soldiers on with a "call yourself a wave,  I'm built to cross proper oceans" attitude.  You do feel so confident in the seakeeping ability of the Nordhavn and the gentle ride.

Here is the route courtesy of Marinetraffic:

To show you just how hard the stabilisers had to work when the bigger waves arrived, here is a night time shot (hence a bit dim and fuzzy, like the crew and captain at 3am) of the stabiliser control panel:

The two black bars on the right hand side show that the fins are at maximum deflection -  a rarity. They then flipped hard over the other way as the wave broke underneath us.  Glad we had the stabiliser service completed earlier this year!

It was an amazing trip.  25 hours underway and just once (near Ailsa Craig) did we have to divert for a fishing boat. Here is the AIS picture showing that several were out and about though:

Once more, in the deep bits, the B&G instruments reverted to 0.0 metres depth.  We had a little more as the Furuno gear shows:

Even the Furuno stuff gave up in around 220 metres when a couple of big breaking waves passed underneath us.

As we approached Holyhead crossing the traffic separation zone, so a fierce cross tide slowed our progress.  Just when you can see the port breakwater and want to get there,  the "time to go"   calculation gets longer, not shorter.  We got even by giving the big Lugger a "burn"  to clean out the exhaust and engine bores / rings after 25 hours at around 40% load.  Although Holyhead is a god forsaken town (sorry residents but just walk up the main street and look around!!)  we were happy to arrive.  Holyhead Marina didn't respond to radio calls on channel 37 (of course) so we just found a suitable spot and moored.  For the first time ever here, we actually had cleats to tie up to that were not all loose and wobbly and a working power supply bollard.  Amazing!

A little later on we had an email from Marinetraffic to say that a new picture of the boat had been added to their database.  Here it is, kindly sent to us by Mike the photographer who captured the boat entering the harbour:

As you can see,  no seaweed hanging from the radar.

For the people who like numbers:

The trip was around 150  nautical miles, but owing to tidal effects we travelled 160 or so.  That took 25 hours at 1575rpm -  average fuel burn of 10 litres per hour. That is higher than normal as the stabilisers were busy (more hydraulic pump load) and the rougher seas meant the big Lugger had to work harder to maintain the set rpm.

Maintenance -  nothing to report.  We'd mentioned that the big Lugger had spurted out a little coolant before (probably overfilled from when the coolant was changed early this year).  Well, it did the same thing during a wide open throttle run around the Scottish Islands.  So, it was treated to a new pressure cap from the spares locker and since then has been fine;

As you can see, the cap likes to advertise its origins.  Anyone (apart from Ruben and Lourdes who have a small native speaker advantage)  know the Spanish for header tank or pressure cap?  Might need that to order a new Mexican part unless they are manufactured to be properly bi-lingual.