Stranraer to Bangor

I really couldn't get up that early this morning after a really late night yesterday. When I got up, the wind was whistling through the marina and the sun was out. In fact the wind was blowing cervisia onto the pontoon so hard that I thought I wasn't going to get her off. With a lot of brute force, I pushed her out, jumped into the cockpit, put the engine on full revs and got out before we got blown back in.

When we got out into Loch Ryan, it was really windy. We didn't have much sail up at all, but were going really quickly. The anemometer said 30 knots at times and that was a tail wind. It must have been force 7 at times or more. I suspect that southerlies get funnelled down Loch Ryan to strengthen them. It was interesting to see where I had been last night in the daylight. What I had thought were buoys looked like War of the Worlds tripod like things sitting out of the water. It was also interesting to see the, building a new ferry terminal further up the loch on the Cairnryan side. I don't know whether cutting 4 miles out of the sea crossing is something that the customers want or whether cutting that much off the voyage saves sufficient fuel for it to be worth building a brand new terminal and jetty. I guess someone has done all the sums.

Passing Lady Bay (where we anchored on the way north), things looked really choppy. I think it was a good idea to do the extra 5 miles down to Stranraer, even if it did prolong things last night and this morning.

As I had to dodge some ferries at the head of Loch Ryan, I decided to heave to as I was out of the way and sailing north was going to get me nowhere. I did this by reefing the genoa fully and pushing the rudder to leeward. This is how the Pardeys reckon it should be done. When I did the sailing school thing, I was told to leave the genoa up and let it back. The Pardey way is definitely the way to do it. Cervisia adopted exactly the right attitude to the sea and everything went really calm. I had never tried this in strong winds before and I was really impressed by how it worked. Backing the genoa always seemed to cause her to sit at right angles to the sea and that never seemed right to me.

Once out of Loch Ryan, we had a good beam reach, steered by the Sea Feather all the way to Belfast Lough. The wind abated more and more the further we went and by the time we sighted Northern Ireland (at a lighthouse called Black Head on the north side of Belfast Lough), it was time to put the engine on and motor the last five miles into Bangor. I didn't actually see much on the crossing over: it was just really grey and the visibility was poor. I think we were only a couple of miles from the land before we saw it. Bangor is a really huge marina protected by a really impressive geometric breakwater. There are loads of boats in it and some of them are pretty impressive. Unusually for me, we got there before it got dark and before the restaurants had closed. I went up into town and enjoyed a pizza then went to bed.

Bangor marina from the North Down coast path

This morning I prepared Cervisia for three weeks without me! I've washed a big pile of clothes and they are now drying inside her. I've also got the sails out inside drying too (we let the cruising chute fall into the water at the time of the Sound of Luing: it was incompetence on my behalf. I then bought a map and walked the North Down coast path to Belfast City Airport. The path passed some lovely little sandy bays that look out over Belfast Lough and went through some nice little bluebell woods. It's not quite as pleasant at the Belfast end where you walk past a sewage works and military barracks (with one of those checkpoints you see on the telly).

I'm now on the plane back to Bristol. I've seen some of the places that we've sailed past on the way up, like the Mull of Galloway and the Isle of Man. The sea looks pretty choppy down there. I think it will be windy and choppy for the next few days (and blowing straight up the Irish Sea). It's probably quite a good thing that I'm going home now. It would be nice to think that there'll be westerlies when I return in three weeks time, but somehow I doubt that the prevailing winds will prevail. They haven't this past two weeks!