12th July 2016 – Day 45 – Port St Mary, Isle of Man to Holyhead, Anglesey

The next morning, we all left at the same time and after saying goodbye said we would be in contact by VHF when we couldn’t see each other anymore. We were heading for Holyhead marina and the other 2 boats for an anchorage on the north coast of Anglesey which they knew well and was close to home for them. Our courses diverged and we lost them quite quickly.

Mark had been feeling rough the day before, he had started to go downhill with a head cold and now, today, he was really suffering. We managed to get the boat sailing and heading on the correct course. The tide was going to cross us today going east to west for 4 hours and then even stronger from west to east for the following 6 hours. We had 45 nautical miles to travel which was probably going to take us about 9 hours. We set our course to try to compensate for some of this tide but we were achieving 6.5 knots so we agreed to re-assess the situation when the tide turned and we could see how much progress we had made.

Mark sat at the helm looking like death warmed up and very quickly gave in and went to bed.

Several hours went by and then the radio sparked to life – “TyMor Tymor this is Kiwi Kiwi, shall we go to channel 06, over”. Over to channel 6 and I learnt that Kiwi had been killing time with song writing and had come up with the first part of what Simon was calling a sea shanty. He wanted us to continue with the theme and compose the next part of the song.

I have mentioned this before, possibly in last year’s blog – I love the VHF radio. It provides hours of true entertainment. It’s almost like a running soap opera as the most ridiculous boat names call up the coast guard for radio checks and routine traffic – this is code for I’d like to tell you all about my planned journey, please Mr CG so that if anything happens you know who I am and roughly where I am. I don’t know how solo sailors, who cross oceans, manage without the constant gibber-gabber of the radio.        

Sick Skipper

Simon then proceeded to sing his rendition so far and I recorded it. Hours later and I was still chuckling to myself. They didn’t cover this on the VHF radio course – how to deal with singing messages. Anyway – here it is, you can hear me chuckling:

Joint Venture then sparked up and agreed to continue the ditty as well.

Skerries Light and rocks

The radio fell silent again and I was left with a looming traffic separation scheme (TSS) and a couple of large container ships tracking across my bow. I was on a collision course with both and adjusted my speed to see them slipping forward along the boat meaning they were going to pass in front of us. TSS’s are lanes in the sea for large vessels (each lane is many miles across) and there’s a no-go (for large vessels) section in the middle. A small vessel should cross at right angles so that they can see you, but there’s no way they are going to alter course for your benefit. It’s like crossing an extremely wide road which has very slow but very large moving traffic. You have to judge whether you can make it in front of them or wait until they pass to cross the lane. All this in slow motion and you do not have an accelerator pedal to help you speed up to get out of their way.

A few miles further on and another container ship starts to aim at us. More evasive action and he passed behind us.

Out of the TSS and we sailed along the side of the Skerries. The race coming around Holy Island was evident. Just as Holyhead started to open up in front of us showing the way into the port and harbour another large vessel appeared on our right hand side – yep the Dublin ferry, probably travelling at 20+ knots was fast approaching the port and we were in his way. 

I radioed into the port to let them know we were there and was told to proceed into the harbour. We rounded the breakwater with minutes to spare before the Dublin ferry was making his final approach and the high-speed cat ferry leaving the port at the same time seemed to fly across the water once it was up to speed. Nothing like a bit of excitement at the end of a long day.

We found the marina, dropped both sails and motored into one of the visitor’s berth. A couple of berths away and there was Clare and John. They had left Douglas at 0500 that morning and had arrived several hours ahead of us. We said we would try and leave with them the following day, but it was already looking dodgy as Mark still wasn’t up to much and after something to eat very quickly went to bed.

The next morning, I heard Clare and John leave at 0500 but Mark was still not too clever so we let them go and texted them later to say we would give Mark a day to recover.

Holyhead marina with cruise ship in the bay

11th July 2016 – Day 44 – Peel Harbour, Isle of Man to Port St Mary, Isle of Man

The winds blew strongly for a few days straight down the length of the inner harbour and everyone agreed now was not the time to be crossing the angry Irish sea. The Westerly folks were all worried about getting home but most of them were resigned to letting the high winds pass through.

We travelled all over the Isle of Man, taking advantage of the bad weather and the cheap ‘Go Explore’ travel cards which you can buy for 1,3 or 5 days and travel everywhere for free all over the island. What a brilliant idea and we saved a fortune. We took the steam train (Mark was so excited, he bounced from one side of the carriage to the other) from Douglas to Port Erin, the horse tram along the sea front in Douglas. The electric train from Douglas to Laxey, to visit the Laxey wheel then took the train up to the highest point on the island – Snaefell. We caught the electric train from Laxey to Ramsey to watch Andy Murray win Wimbledon in a pub and then caught the bus back to Peel.

We met several people on the way, most notably – Clare and John who had sailed from Milford Haven and were moored in Douglas waiting for a weather window to get home.

Finally, it was time to leave, but we decided to break the trip into 2 stages. We (our own self built flotilla comprising of ‘Kiwi’ – Simon & Janet, ‘Joint Venture’ – Malcolm, Gill and Aida the dog and ‘Ty Mor’) left the inner harbour at roughly the same time 1730 and headed south. The aim was to have a leisurely sail down the coast and to pass through Calf Sound at the south end of the island at 2034 (that’s HW Liverpool +0345). The sea state was still moderate after all the high winds we had been having but at least the white water had all disappeared just leaving an uncomfortable swell and chop in places. There was very little wind so we slowly motor sailed down to the bottom end of the island.

Much discussion on board about whether it was still too early to sail through the relatively small Calf Sound channel as we approached it 30 minutes too early. The water was still boiling with current and as we got closer it seemed to look even smaller. You could feel the boat being buffeted around by the current and with some nasty rocks just under the surface it was starting to look a little unpleasant. We turned around and thought we’d kill some time running away from it and re-approach it in say 20 minutes. The boat behind us was ‘Joint Venture’ and they looked at us questioning our decision to bale. We watched him as he set his path and run the gauntlet. At times he seemed to completely disappear in the troughs of the waves but several minutes later and he was safely through.

Our turn and with some trepidation we also made it safely through. At the precise allotted time – Kiwi made it through without issue at all. We sailed on round to Port St Mary and tried to pick up a visitors mooring but there were none left. It was a popular destination after all the bad weather as everyone realised they could make the welsh coast the next day. We tried anchoring but the ground was not good and the anchor wouldn’t hold. When it came up it was double in size with the amount of kelp it had ripped out.  The next option was to tie up against the wall but there was little space so we choose a commercial vessel which had a run of tyres down the outside of it and which would give us ample protection against his steel hull. We just had to keep half an ear open in case someone turned up and decided to move the vessel out of the harbour.

Kiwi and Joint Venture were rafted together in front of us. 

6th July 2016 – Day 43 – Bangor marina, Belfast to Peel Harbour, Isle of Man

Abercorn basin from the Titanic building

We took a day off and visited the Titanic exhibition in the Titanic Quarter, Belfast (Mark says “it’s was a rubbish boat as it sank”) but we can highly recommend a visit to everyone. We wished, afterwards, we had taken the boat into the Abercorn basin which is right next to the exhibition rather than taking the train in. The pontoons were half empty and it would have been exciting to take Ty Mor into a city. Maybe next time!

The Nomadic - Titanic’s tender

The next day the plan was too get up early and catch the east going tide through the Copeland channel by 0700. This meant leaving the pontoon by 0600. We decided to set our route to Ardglass marina but, if the conditions looked good once we had rounded the Copelands we still had the option of sailing straight for Peel and miss out Ardglass altogether.

This is exactly what happened. Once we had safely negotiated the channel through the Copeland Islands and after achieving 9.8 knots speed over ground with much of the speed being attributable to the tide, it became clear that a run over to Peel was completely possible. We had some good winds but ended up motor sailing just to keep the speed up.

Another picture of Nomadic

Anybody have any idea what this is, we had to ask!

Here's a clue

Abercorn basin pontoons

Passing several groups of boats, we started to wonder what was happening and listened to the communications - one of the large vessels had its ground tackle caught under water. The other vessel seemed to be some sort of fisheries patrol boat and was standing by.

Early morning light in Belfast Lough

We approached another group of vessels who were all trawling and remembered that we were in the middle of herring season on the Isle of Man. There again a fisheries patrol vessel seemed to be keeping an eye on proceedings and approaching them one by one.

We radioed Peel harbour asking for the next bridge swing and he instructed us to proceed in towards the harbour. The wind and choppy sea outside suddenly dropped off as we rounded into the outer harbour and made our way to the narrow inner harbour entrance. The harbour master gave us instructions to tie up against another boat just inside the entrance and it turned out to be another Moody 38. It later transpired that the boat was a renamed (to Bluette) Choke Dee. The very boat we viewed in Southampton and made an offer on. She looked good.

Ballyholme bay again

Then bad luck hit us or rather a Viking boat. We were tied up tight unable to move and a motor boat, which had been tasked to move 3 Viking longboats from the inner harbour to the outer harbour in readiness for a charity event, motored by with the 3 Viking vessel in tow.

Copeland islands

As the motor boat passed through the harbour gates the 2 guys lost control of the 3 boats and the wind blew the vessels in our direction. The last boat came sliding towards us and the extended stern hit firstly our outboard, then the GPS antennae, then the horseshoe lifebuoy. I had been filming the Viking boats and caught the whole thing on camera. In the next few seconds the longship also took a chunk out of the concrete harbour wall and took down a light on a scaffolding pole in the outer harbour. Loads of damage.

Isle of man getting closer

The harbour master assessed our damage and called Nigel the event organiser who also came to look at the damage and kindly offered to pay for any replacement kit.

We moved Ty Mor in some tricky high winds round onto a pontoon and found Simon and Janet again. The Westerly convention was starting to amass and there was very little room in the harbour. We met back up with Kyla and John and met some other Westerly owners, some of which were friends of Simon and Janet. Peel harbour was a very social place and it was difficult to wander down the pontoon without speaking to people. Just our sort of place and quite different to the unfriendly bigger marinas like Troon or Bangor.

Peel Harbour

I also met Fiona and she told me all about their forthcoming trip over to the Caribbean.  They should have left already but had some last minute bad news and had to put their plans on hold. Their boat name was Sisu and Peel is her home port. They had been working on their trip for some time and were almost ready and would be leaving in the next few weeks. We swapped details and vowed to follow each other’s blog.

Watching Wales v Portugal in the pub with friends