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.