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