Bangor to Troon

The fun times in Bangor had to end. Why oh why did the tide times dictate that it would end very early on a Sunday morning? It was the weekend of the "Sea Bangor" festival so as we headed out there were a few visitor attractions to admire (or otherwise):

We were happy enough though as the new little switch in the flybridge throttle controller was working just fine. Long may it continue.

Anchored off the harbour was the Hebridean Princess, the old ferry that has become a rather exclusive little cruise ship. As the Bangor harbourmaster told us, you know how expensive it is when you realise that you have to wade through the pile on the carpets:

We guessed that the tourists on board were sleeping off the excesses from the evening before as things were very quiet:

The cruise that they were on was shown on the website as costing £12k per person for a week. I think you would need to drink a lot to justify that price so we crept quietly past her so as not to upset any hangovers.

Heading into the North Channel there were several ferries and other cruise liners heading into Belfast and picking up their pilots:

We blame Ken for the liner epidemic.  His shipping company brought the first one into the city and things have snowballed. 

We were bound for Troon which is a simple straight line trip which takes you close to the Ailsa Craig. If you don't know it, then it is a lump of rock in a most odd position off the coast of Scotland. There was a hint of mist hanging around it as we passed by:

The trip was pretty calm, the wind only picked up as we approached Troon harbour and had to dodge a few fishing markers. Our timing was pretty perfect, we avoided having to hang off due to the departure of the ferry to Arran and headed straight into the harbour. Cue another lifeboat picture as we passed through to the marina:

As you can see, the route is pretty straight and we had no need to deviate for anything, bar the Hebridean Princess as we left Bangor:

60 odd nautical miles and 9.5 hours later we berthed on a nice big hammerhead in Troon. All good. The plan was to spend a few nights there and then head to Largs where we'd booked our annual lift out. 

Maintenance news:

We had some. The captain had nipped up the stern gland because it was dripping too much following the long run up the Irish sea. It was dripping at a rate of one per second or so and making the bilge pump kick in far too often. That had been reduced to one every 5 seconds or so whilst in Bangor. Guess what, out to sea it dripped far less and on one of the routine engine room checks, the stern gland was running nearly 20 degrees hotter than normal. So, it got freed off a little whilst underway. Not a huge job but much needed. Might be time to repack the thing.

Just enjoying Bangor and fixing things

Funnily enough, we tried hard to get some sleep when we arrived in Bangor but somehow, it eluded us. So, after a shower and breakfast we ventured to the office to "check in" and collect the gate codes etc. We were welcomed like old friends which was rather nice. Then it became even more social. A chat with lots of local folks and an invite to a BBQ that we had to decline as we were likely to fall asleep during it. We did manage to wash off (well, simply hose off to be fair) the vast amounts of salt we had accumulated from our trip(s) up here.

Amongst the many excitements was a coffee and scone stop at the Guillemot with Ken. Debbie had the feeble excuse of going to work. As you can see from the website (weblink) they have quite a range of food offerings. We only sampled the rather good scones. 

On the trip up, the ensign (red duster) that had been repaired by the crew numerous times, started to fray again. As the original proportions had already been seriously altered by cutting off the trailing edge and resewing it many times, we felt that a big investment was needed. Instead of the nice sewn version we bought a cheapo printed thing from the local chandlery and were amazed at how "red" it was compared to our old (2009) faded version:

On the social front, we also tried out one of our old favourite spots, the Olive Tree. We met up with "Stornoway George" there, the man who owned a lovely Fisher trawler yacht who we met in, yes, you guess it, Stornoway. More scone sampling, again good although the place was very quiet. We wonder how long it will survive.

When in Bangor, if you get an invite to the Royal Ulster Yacht club, just go. We got one and did. It was yacht race night so we watched the yachts trundling back and forth on broad reaches whilst enjoying an excellent dinner. Some fun came when we wanted to pay the bill - the crew ended up having a little wrestling match with Debbie on the way to the bar. We fear that this will be discussed in the club for years to come. Sorry Debbie, but we are pleased that the crew won the battle.

We did have one excursion from Bangor courtesy of the wrestling folks. They drove us to Donaghadee so we could have a wander around but mainly to visit the Copeland distillery. As you can imagine, persuading us to go was tricky.

They've done a great job in the modern building, keeping the still area open to the small coffee shop:

and the smell was quite wonderful, sadly missing from these pictures:

We just sampled their coffee (good) but were treated to a bottle of the excellent Raspberry and mint gin that we'd sampled a couple of years ago. There is plenty of choice:

Outside were some containers that might appeal to serious alcoholics:

We resisted. It was not hard to do so either. Wandering around the sea front and harbour we added another lifeboat picture to our archive:

The visitor berths behind it are not too appealing though. 

Debbie (the wrestler) is a seriously artistic lady and she gave us a look around the Seacourt print workshop in town. There was a truly amazing exhibition of prints from linocuts with incredible detailing and they were BIG too. This one was outstanding:

Meanwhile, we had become famous on a Facebook group - even if the person that posted the picture to "Trawler Life" seemed unaware of Nordhavn craft:

Our week in Norn Iron came to a very happy close with dinner at Tuk Tuk.  Here is their weblink . Friday night and it was wildly busy but served very authentic food. The captain had some Malaysian dishes that reminded him of the food he loved during work trips to that country. Excellent food and company (Keith and Ingrid) made for another great evening that stretched into the early hours of the following morning sitting in the cockpit of their yacht. 

The last day in town involved some shopping, more local scone time, some course prep and then a guided tour of the boat for Andrew and Lisa. They are yottie folks and Andrew has been devouring Nordhavn owner's videos. We think he quite fancies one as his next boat. We'd met them after our Tuk Tuk dinner and it was a great pleasure to host them on board for a look around. Andrew seemed very settled in:

The captain so recognises that grin, from when we first looked at the boat with a plan to buy her...... Lisa - sorry, your bank account will never recover.

The week in Bangor passed so quickly. So many friendly folks there,

Maintenance news:

That pesky flybridge throttle / gear controller was in for some surgery. The intermittent issue with the button you press to "take command" was getting to be very annoying. Last year we'd tried to swap it out, only to find that the push to make switch had to be way shorter than most of those you can buy, thanks to the bolts that hold the case together getting in the way. So, we removed the controller and opened it up. You can see the old button at the bottom of the picture:

It was replaced and the controller rebuilt. We will see how it behaves now......

The stern gland got tightened a bit to slow the drip rate and we took out the two duck bill valves that stop water siphoning back into the grey water tank and main cabin heads. They were pretty grubby and one certainly needed to be replaced. Only they are different to the ones that protect the wing and genset, fore heads and black water tank. Grr. Why? As the folks at M and G in Guernsey decided to replace the original valves with Vetus ones when they swapped out all the sanitary hoses. Please don't ask why. There is no logical answer. We ordered some Vetus duck bills.

Most annoyingly, the manual bilge pump that we rebuilt a while ago had a little weep from a seam. There are some pictures in this blog post . We resealed it but we think that this winter it is "rip and replace" time. The huge pump is good but the boat had an aluminium body and so was bound to corrode over time. A new bronze version is a really crazy price, even compared to the usual inflated prices for boat parts. We might do some investigation into alternatives.

The engine room had a quick clean up too - it was pretty grubby, the captain was ashamed enough to do something about it.

Milford Haven to Bangor (Norn Iron)

When tide timings dictate a 3am departure, the joy is unbounded. When it is dictated after a 5am start the prior day and a fairly uncomfortable trip, plus some anchoring fun, it is even better. The joys of boating. The alarm was unwelcome but we put the kettle on and got the boat ready. Leaving Milford in the pitch darkness means being glued to the FLIR (Forward Looking Infra Red) image on the screen to see any nasty pot markers lurking around. At 3am after little sleep it does focus the mind and make you wake up pretty quickly.

Soon we got back into the night routine of FLIR, plotter and radar images on the three screens. We took a bit of fair tide with us as we went west towards St David's head. (Insomniacs who listen to the BBC shipping forecast will recognise the name). On the way we pass Skomer, the island that is a haven to loads of puffins in the breeding season, ie now. As it was dark we could only admire their antics on the FLIR, but this poor quality video (taken on a phone camera from the pilothouse screen, the real image is way better) shows just how many birds were out and about hunting for food:

You could almost feel sorry for the sand eel population. We rounded St David's head at just about the right time to take the changing tide north with us so made good progress. The big firing range in Cardigan Bay was not operating (we always check that one!) so a straight line course to Northern Ireland was possible. One long long leg of the passage on the same bearing. The sea was rather nice by now, a gentle wind on the beam and the waves it induced were pretty small, the stabilisers laughed them off. 

There was a fair bit of commercial traffic but amazingly we didn't need to alter course once, everything was on a track to miss us by at least a nautical mile and a half:

We were pretty tired so the off watch person was very focussed on sleeping. The crew was a little more successful than the captain in doing that but neither of us managed a proper snooze, most annoying. As we headed further up the Irish sea, we didn't even have any close encounters with the many ferries heading to and from Dublin. Quite amazing really, we were in our own little bubble, listening to the radio via the satellite TV dome. The routine of "on watch, engine checks, pump some fuel from the storage tanks through the filter into the supply tank, try to sleep" was followed all day. It got interrupted by tea and food deliveries but not much more. 

Here is the pretty simple route we took north to the Dublin area:

when the weather decided that there ought to be some showers. We saw plenty of very short lived rainbows but only captured one poor picture:

Once you get to Dublin, it you've timed things properly, you can enjoy about 12 hours of a fair tide, ie tide going with you north. We just about managed that, probably 45 minutes too late but not bad considering the length of the trip. The overnight passage towards Northern Ireland was uneventful, except we were both still struggling to sleep when off watch.

Daybreak was lovely and welcome:

Passing Portaferry we were treated to a rain shower and a view through the pilothouse side window of some serious fire with a massive plume of smoke heading over towards our track:

As you can see, the camera decided to focus on our wet window, not the fire. Luckily the thick black smoke was dissipating a bit by the time we had to pass through it. As we approached the Copeland Islands the tide had turned against us and as it runs very hard, we opted to go around the outside of the islands rather than fight through the inshore passage. Both are slow against the tide but one is very slow. At least this gave us the opportunity to photo the lighthouse on Mew Island, out first to add to the gallery this year:

Here is the rest of the route as we headed into Bangor:

We were very happy when we called them around 8am and they said they had a berth for us, no need to anchor up and wait for one to become free.  So, around twenty-nine and a half hours after leaving the Milford anchorage, we tied up, made breakfast and felt pretty wrung out. Despite that, it was great to be in Bangor. The trip was pretty quick and drama free. We like trips like that.

The boat behaved well, that pesky flybridge throttle button worked first push as we approached the marina and took control from above. The only thing we needed to do was tighten up the stern gland a bit as following the run it was dripping too frequently. Not too urgent a job.

Penarth to Milford Haven, a less than lovely first trip of the season

The one weather window that looked favourable for a run up the Irish sea meant we had to leave Penarth early morning and push into the NW'ly wind all the way to Milford Haven. There we planned to anchor up and wait for the tides to head north. 

The marina was pretty quiet at 5:15am as we headed out into Cardiff Bay:

We were not as quiet. The big John Deere main engine is very quiet when ticking over at marina speed but for some odd reason, the throttle / gear controllers were squealing despite working perfectly. All was well until we took over control from the flybridge. We'd had issues before when it would take several button pushes to engage properly. It had worked perfectly on our test runs around the bay during the winter and very recently but today, a whole new and different irritant!

We headed into the 5:30 barrage lock, with all three control heads squealing nicely. We apologised to the yacht in there with us about the noise and headed out to sea for the first time in several months, following our rather truncated summer trip last year:

The timing was good - as we headed out into the channel that leads to the lock and Cardiff commercial docks, a big guy was heading in:

Being in the narrow channel at the same time as him would not have been advisable!

The start of the trip was pretty good. No rain and we were sheltered by the land from what the sporty NW wind could do. Patrick and Kylie looked pretty happy, even if  poor Patrick is showing his age by going nicely grey, in a distinguished penguin sort of way:

We wondered if Kylie turned her back on the old guy as she still looks pretty young. Harsh considering how long they've been together.

As we passed Barrybados and headed towards Swansea, so the shelter from the land decreased and it got bumpier. Looking at the horizon to avoid seasickness is a good idea that the furry stowaways adopted quite quickly:

As we pushed our way through the short wavelength and quite steep waves being produced by the wind over tide conditions we kept washing the anchor. Yes, the bow of the Nordhavn is a long long way above the waterline. Work it out. We spotted that the HUGE Nordhavn 55 folks Alex and Gisele had left Weymouth and according to Marine Traffic, were on a pretty sporty run to Halifax in Canada:

We sent them a message wishing them a good trip and hoped they had topped up with fuel and food.

To the east of Milford Haven there is a firing range. Despite doing this trip many times, we've only seen it active once and familiarity had bred contempt so the captain hadn't even checked the firing times. Guess what, they called us to say they were active and we had to divert around the range area - see the odd "bulge" in what would have been a straight line track to Milford entrance:

What looks like a little detour on the image actually added around 90-120 minutes to our journey and even worse, took us further south so we then had to head back directly into the wind again with less shelter from the land. We were so happy. Even happier when the best anchorage spot off Dale had a couple of yachts in it. We tried one location, dragged and headed further into the estuary, Sandy Haven Bay, where we finally anchored, all alone. 

The flybridge throttle/gear controller misbehaved once more and the captain captured the error code on the system which reported a "short circuit" in the controller's push button. Only it wasn't. Great end to a bumpy, diverted 14 hour first trip of the season. Things can only get better.

We took careful note of where the pot marker buoys were ready for our departure the next morning, checked the engine which was happy but had burped out some coolant (the pre-departure top up had added a bit too much) and fell on some food. Sleep was going to be short.

Broken Captain, delayed departure

After a couple of days back afloat when we finished the hull polishing, gave the waterline area a scrub and generally prepared to leave we also had some nice weather to enjoy:

Sometimes enjoyment means the aft cockpit with a cheeky G and T. Had to be done. Although it looks nice and tropical, the wind was still keen but sheltered in the cockpit allowed us to believe that summer might arrive soon.

Then a huge spanner in the works. The captain woke up one morning with a painful back / leg in a way that he had not experienced before. It was not a good way. Far from it in fact. Each step was seriously painful so it became a "drag the leg around and do loads of exercises to free the thing up" day. Naturally that happened just after the hull scrubbing escapade and a couple of days after the trip on the horribly uncomfortable train from Southampton. It also happened at a weekend but the osteopath appointment was duly booked for as early as possible. Fortunately the exercises really worked and the captain was fit to get to the Osteopath although the monster hill in Penarth was not attempted - a taxi ride instead. Walking back down was OK though. 

To be sure, we delayed leaving, had a couple more osteo visits and decided to have a quick trip back to Hythe to check on Toddlerville and the exterior decorating that was underway. The scaffolding that is now needed to paint the place was a serious affair and costs more than the work itself:

Fond memories of the first few times we had the place decorated and they just used ladders came flooding back...... The smart scaffolders hadn't asked the Toddlers if they needed access to the garage or wanted to get the car out so it was marooned inside. Brilliant service. To make things worse, the painters who were supposed to start the day after the scaffolders all mysteriously got ill / had an overrunning job so they took ages before starting. The joys of getting work done are unbounded.

During our stay in Hythe we took advantage of Alex and Gisele (yes, the couple with the HUGE Nordhavn 55) being in Lymington to pop over and visit them. On the way through Beaulieu there were more wild donkeys on the green than we've ever seen there. The crew took a quick picture that only captured a few of them and mainly bum views:

As you can see, Avis like to remind folks to drive on the left. 

We much enjoyed catching up with the HUGE Nordhavn owners and hearing about their summer plans. Made us get more serious about ours too.  So, we returned to Penarth, dropped off the hire car (driving on the left of course) and did some final boat prep and lots of weather checks. They were a bit depressing. Loads of northerly / NEly strong winds, not at all ideal for going up the Irish sea.

There was one little weather window for that trip, so we prepared for a nice early morning departure to Milford Haven, followed by an even earlier one the following day from Milford to head north. Tide times can be a nuisance.