After several days waiting for better weather there was a
general consensus among the various boats on the pontoon that today was the
day.
We completed our passage plan to Glenarm which involved
crossing the Irish Sea north channel at 90 degrees. The weather was W/SW 4 or
5, perfect wind strength but the direction meant that, once again, we would be
heading straight into it. Where were all the northerlies or north westerlies
(which had been plaguing us whilst we travelled north) when you needed them. Kiwi
had decided to head east and use the westerly wind to blow them along. So the
plan was for us to head over to Northern Ireland, down to Bangor marina,
Ardglass and then over to Peel and they would stay on the Scottish coast – Loch
Ryan, Portpatrick on the Mull of Galloway and then down to Peel and we would
meet in a couple of days.
So we waved goodbye to Simon and Janet and shouted – “see
you in Peel” as we slid out of the harbour. A training boat was also making
ready to leave for Glenarm, this was comforting as they probably came up with
the same passage plan timings as us, therefore confirming our travel plan was
probably about right. The real tricky bit is making sure you are 2 miles south
of the Sanda lighthouse (thereby avoiding the over-falls) by the time the tides
turns and starts to travel west i.e. in your favour. Get this wrong and you
will be going nowhere and possibly backwards in a rough sea. The pilot says
“plan to be south of Sanda about the time that tide turns to the west”. This
proved to be absolutely correct and worked perfectly. So we had to calculate
backwards as it was going to take us about 3 hours to get to this point.
As we left the loch we set sails and had a pleasant sail to
the end of the Kintyre peninsula. The high cliffs were giving us some
protection from the winds but as soon as we cleared the cliffs the full force
of the wind hit us from the south west forcing us to quickly pull in a couple
of reefs. The sea was pretty turbulent at this point as well. The over-falls
were quite close and the sea became choppy. At this point we also had a 1 knot
of tide against us. The training yacht was approaching fast and the pressure
was on. As we reached our all-important waypoint at the bottom of the island,
everything was under complete control, the tide dropped off and started to run
with us, the sea calmed down and we were making good ground with 2 reefs in. We
set our course to steer to compensate for the next few hours of tide pushing us
north and watched with interest as the training vessel set their course
directly for Glenarm. They seem to float passed us (being considerably bigger)
and they waved in acknowledgment.
For many hours our courses diverged with us pointing almost
south and them heading almost directly SW and it was interesting to watch them
being pushed further and further north and then having to travel south along
the Antrim coast against some of the strongest flows in the north channel. For
our part the plan worked perfectly, Steve (my RYA instructor in that
little-known seaside town of Usk) would have been so proud.
As we approached Glenarm it was obvious there was some kind
of festival going on. There were dinghies at the mouth of the harbour along
with their safety boat. Inside the harbour there were many canoes full of
lively teenagers and the seats around the marina all seemed to be full of
teenagers as well and there was a not too distant drum beat announcing some
kind of music festival.
We took a berth and quickly got chatting to everyone around
us. We met Dickie and Alison on a Maxi 1100 (very nice boat) on their way to
the Scottish isles for a 5 week break. They were off to buy whiskey from the
distilleries and having sampled and visited many of the distilleries we felt
knowledgeable enough to hold a conversation on the subject. They had left
Bangor, their home port, that day and gave us an introduction card for the
Royal Ulster Yacht club. Many fine whiskeys from various bottles (ours and
theirs) later and it was time to fall into bed.
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