Bangor to Dale (Milford Haven)

With our extra crew member on board, we did a little planning for a departure down the Irish Sea. Leaving Bangor around low water gives you great tidal help heading south for nearly 12 hours but at our speed it then gets you to St David's head (where the tides run very strongly) a little too early. Our compromise, backed up by the planning tool in the Time Zero software was to head off about an hour and a half later. A 7 am departure isn't too bad, although we're not keen on breakfast at 6.15am.

Heading south, Simon looked very "at home" helming once we had negotiated the Donaghadee sound where the tidal flows make course keeping rather challenging:

The weather forecast said light winds early on and they were not kidding - which was good as we were heading into them initially.:  

4.3 knots is a rounding error really. The boat pottered along at the standard cruise speed of 1475 rpm with little fuss as we tracked down the coast:

and again as forecast, the wind swung to be astern of us with a wild speed of half a knot:

Things were pretty uneventful.  Simon was learning how the Furuno kit and autopilot worked but we had no need for the stabilisers so that lesson had to wait a little. As night fell and we approached the Dublin area, so the fishing boats came out en masse. Several of them were doing the usual thing of "no AIS" so we relied on the radar to spot and track them. You can see that things were a touch busy:

Simon managed an amazing number of hours at the helm, only taking comfort breaks during the day and two "sleep breaks" overnight. We are not sure if it was excitement, terror, strange substances or a lack of trust in having the captain or crew at the helm that kept him going so effectively.  No matter, it did allow the crew to rest her back and help her recuperation.

The radar picked up one strange target and tracked it. Slow moving, we passed close enough to be able to see the navigation lights - only there were none. Then a yacht that was following us went incredibly close to it:

If the yacht (green triangle) also had radar then they ought to have spotted the"object". Plenty of speculation happened at crew changeover time, the top offerings being a surfacing submarine or a "lost container" floating about. It was a very clear radar target which ARPA happily tracked (the circle and number 31 on the image above) so the yacht had a narrow escape indeed.

Dawn was pretty but only witnessed and photographed by the crew. The captain and Simon were catching up on sleep a little:

You can see that once you clear the most easterly part of Northern Ireland, the route is pretty much due south in one long straight line of about 154 nautical miles: This is how Marinetraffic tracked us:

We had the fun of some dolphins to watch, plenty of seabirds and the radio to keep us company. Mind you, the news was terminally depressing hence it got switched off so as not to spoil the rather good mood on board. Heading towards St David's head, a fresher northerly wind picked up as they forecast and kicked up some bigger following waves. Only a metre and a half with the occasional one up to around 2 metres so the stabilisers started to earn their passage.

We felt that we should take the obligatory lighthouse picture as we passed the Bishop rocks:

mainly to show what a nice day it was really. The tide duly turned to help us (we had been down to about 3.3 knots over the ground) and we made good progress across the bay towards Milford Haven. You can see from the MarineTriffic plot that our AIS signal was not picked up until we were close to the islands (Skomer and Skokholm) so they just extrapolated it with dots. We doubt that our actual course was that straight:

and you cannot blame Simon for any wiggles that did happen - the autopilot was in charge and fighting with the stabilisers for directional control 

Passing between the two islands the tide really wants to carry you south so we were steering a course that was 30 degrees different to our actual track over the ground. It was rather a shock to see yachts and other motor boats again who were out enjoying the nice weather from the moorings / marinas in the Milford Haven area. As we headed into the harbour and the captain was busy preparing the anchor for action, we were spotted and photographed by the folks we know on Allegro, a yacht that berths in Neyland:

Our pictures of their yacht are way less exciting as they had to be taken into the sun:

Still, we tried.....

We headed up to the northern part of the bay off Dale and dropped the anchor in about 6 meters of water, knowing another 4 were coming and that we would lose 2 of the 6 when we hit low water, Engine off and a little relaxation after 32.5  hours or so underway. Dinner was a splendid steak courtesy of the farm shop in Northern Ireland as we felt that we had earned it.. Wish we could go back and buy some more, it was that good. The anchor light cooperated this time and we settled down to catch up on sleep a little. 

Maintenance news:

There isn't any, sorry. The main engine and the electronics all behaved perfectly unlike the occupants of the boat. We didn't even manage to blow a navigation bulb.