Whitehaven to Bangor only we didn't mean to go there

The weather forecasts had been pretty horrible - very windy and not tempting for the haul up to the area around Glasgow. Finally, there was a window when the strong SW'ly winds would abate for a while and the sea could calm down. A few fog banks were possible around early morning but the radar sorts that out OK.

The plan was a run up to Tarbert. For the optimum timing with the tides, we needed to leave Whitehaven before there was enough water to do so. Hence, we went for the damage limitation approach of departing as soon as we could do so. Out to sea it was a lot mistier / foggier than the forecast suggested. Still, a chance to use the new digital radar some more and tinker about with the settings. Having criticised it before, we find that turning off the function that shows approaching targets in red and "safe" ones in green really helps! Mad but the resolution and definition is way better and more like we expected. I feel some questions for "Furuno Dan" coming up at the Southampton Boat Show..... Things were OK with the sea state, up to 2 meters waves on the port bow but they had a short wavelength thanks to the effect of the tide. A gentle stabiliser work out time.

The route took us close the the Mull of Galloway:

Only it was shrouded in fog and so we saw it like this:

You might just spot the land. We allowed Patrick and his female companion to face inside the pilothouse as there was nothing for them to see outside. Caring parents aren't we? It was pretty quiet out to sea:

with only one commercial guy around. We had to push the turning tide rounding the Mull and then heading north, in thickening fog. A broadcast from the Irish coastguard guys woke us up a bit - the gales forecast for the open sea and the force 7 forecast for the inshore area of the Clyde and around Tarbert (our planned destination) were coming in earlier. They suggested that this would be around 3am - we would still be heading up inside the Mull of Kintyre towards Tarbert then. A check on line and the Met Office were contradictory. The gale warning said:

later meaning 4am or so. Although we would be fairly well sheltered by then we opted to cut the trip short and head across to Northern Ireland instead - Bangor is always a good place to visit! You can see from the the track when we made the course change:

The fog stayed with us all the way past the Copeland Islands (you can just see them to the south of our track just off Donaghadee). This is the view of the lighthouse on Mew Island:

and then cleared a little so that we could take advantage of the last of the daylight to sneak onto a tiny finger berth in Bangor Marina around 10.30pm. Being further north does help with daylight hours even if it spoils the temperature and weather a bit! It felt like being at home, before we were tied up we had an invitation out to dinner for the following night. Norn Iron hospitality at its best.

Numbers and Maintenance news:

The boat behaved well, nothing to fix or tinker with. We were underway for around 13 hours, 10 of those needing the help of the radar. We ran at around 1475rpm, gave the wing engine a run so it wasn't bored and the main Lugger a good long WOT (wide open throttle) burn before arriving to clean her and the exhaust out. It was not down on rpm suggesting that the propeller and underwater areas hadn't become too fouled up during our long stay in Whitehaven. The temperature difference between coolant going in and coming out of the keel cooler was still around 30 F so it is in pretty good shape too. Happy about that.

Annoyingly, the promised gales did not arrive at 4am the next morning. They kindly waited until mid-day so we could have continued as originally planned. Better safe than sorry though.