Neyland to Whitehaven (via Dale)

A trip up to the Cumbrian coast was going to take around 32 hours and to make the planning fun, we needed to arrive with sufficient tide height as Whitehaven has an entrance that dries out. The trip has two areas where there are strong tides that would be way better going in our favour too - around St David's head (south Wales) and around Anglesey (north Wales).

Planning was "interesting" in the very English sense of the word. Cheating by using the Time Zero software and also an older Euronav software package that we have gave conflicting advice. A manual calculation is amusing owing to the time and distance (nearly 220 nautical miles / 30 odd hours). Eventually a decision was arrived at which was not a nice one.

So, we left the happy spot in Neyland after washing off all the salt from storm Hannah so we could see though the pilothouse screens again. We needed enough depth to sneak past the other boats moored on hammerheads hence a 4pm or so departure. Patrick and Kylie seemed most interested in the moored tankers:

or perhaps they were just amazed at the size of the things. We were experimenting with the FLIR and this commercial guy:

produced this strange FLIR image:

The black strip on the hull isn't a major failure of the infra-red detector - they were pumping water over the side and you can clearly see how much colder it was than the surrounding hull area!

We were far too early to carry on towards Whitehaven so we went down to Dale and anchored off there. Finding a suitable spot was amusing thanks to lots of local moorings and lots of pot markers. We mentally noted what might be a safe course out again in the dark. A 1:30am alarm was not welcome but necessary. Then we said many thanks to the FLIR as we picked our way out between the pot markers and headed out to sea - something that we would never have attempted without it.

Here is part 1 of the route:

The favourable tide helped us make fast progress around St David's Head and up the Irish sea. No firing was taking place in the Aberporth range area so no need for any diversions to the west either. It was eerily quiet as the AIS confirmed:

We very rarely have an empty target list! In fact we did check that it was still working OK. Finally we saw a little fishing boat off the coast near Bardsey Island. It felt reassuring, we had wondered if we had missed a Tsunami warning or similar when we were the only boat out there despite the rather nice conditions.

Roaring past Anglesey with more favourable tide help during the evening, we had to dodge our first commercial ship which was coming out of the traffic scheme and heading to Liverpool:

It felt a little annoying to be bothered by one after so many quiet hours at sea. A stunning sunset made up for it nicely and started the night time watches off well:

Between the Isle of Man and the English coast there are plenty of wind farms and some production platforms too. At night they looked quite menacing on the radar, a bit like an old style warship flotilla in multiple line astern formation heading towards us:

Plenty of Megawatts coming from that lot!

We pulled a little power off for the final part of the run north so that we arrived around the planned 8:30am time when there should be enough water in the approach channel to the lock at Whitehaven.  That went a little bit wrong as a fresh NW'ly breeze had picked up and that was pushing some reasonable waves into the harbour area. Wanting a bit more tide height to feel comfortable about entering, we just headed a little further north, giving the wing engine something to do, before turning to the harbour. This confused several stalkers on AIS who thought that we had overshot or that our Furuno kit was trying to save us from the deprivation of Whitehaven town:

No pictures of the approach or lock as the captain was busy with the wheel countering the effect of the waves on the stern and the crew was rather occupied with lines and fenders. Here is the entrance as a chart sees it:

and a pic from the internet of the lock:

Just picture a Nordhavn 47 in exactly the spot that fishing boat is in and you get the idea.

We were told to go onto the fuel berth, two of the dockmasters helped with our lines then we were given a choice of berths! VIP service indeed. To be fair, knowing the Finance Director of the group that operates the marina might have helped but in reality we've witnessed great service for everyone that comes in / has a berth here. The tough decision was - a berth close to the facilities tucked along the walkway or one in a more remote area but on a hammerhead. We opted for the hammerhead so we could turn the boat around and clean the port side of the hull (and maybe even polish it too).

Numbers etc:

The trip is around 220 nautical miles and it took us around 31 hours. Nothing to report from the regular engine room checks bar the temperature in there getting up to about 40 C as the factory fit fans are pretty feeble and the wind was from the wrong direction to encourage more air circulation. 40C is fever time for a human, not a disaster in the engine room but warmer than we would like it to be. Must get around to adding some more fans to improve the circulation in there. Other owners have experimented with various set-ups and we can use their experience.

We had one very strange blip from the Furuno kit that we are investigating - one instance  (screen) decided to reboot itself. After that, rock solid again, as was the PC system. It was a good opportunity to play with the new radar too - sorry to say but the old technology magnetron radar with the enormous scanner still is the favourite for clarity. Must learn more about the digital one and see if we can set it up a little more impressively - with a 4 foot scanner and sexy electronics it ought to do better we feel.