Cahore Point Ireland to Skomer

I slept ok for the first 4 hours of the night, but then the wind got up and cervisia started bouncing around. I was not anchored in a place at was suitable for north east winds: there was little choice. The main thing is that the anchor held and cervisia is alright. I got some rest for the other few hours. When I got up at 430, there were clearly some waves around and there was a force 3 wind. The sun was just coming up and it seemed like a good time to get moving.

Cervisia was really straining at her anchor. I thought that it might be a pig to get out, but it was fine. I then had to stow the anchor (not easy on cervisia at the best of times) while cervisia was bouncing around in the waves.
The Irish coastguard were forecasting calm winds. Indeed the local observations on the radio were for 2 to 3 knots of wind. We must have been in a magic windy spot as we had a good force 3. This wind stayed with us most of the way across the Irish Sea, only giving out for an hour somewhere in the middle. It was a gorgeous day with sunny skies and it was pretty warm too. We made good progress on a broad reach most of the way. When the wind died, I got the spinnaker out which helped a lot. It looks colourful too.

It was a good job that we hadn't gone down Cardigan Bay (the original plan) as they were firing missiles into it from Aberporth. I think the dolphins might have been on holiday too. I saw none in the Irish Sea.
It was good to sight land at the far side. I recognised Carn Lidi a St David's head. After that all the islands and hills started to make sense. I knew that the tide was going to turn against us and so had the cruising chute up to get past the South Bishop lighthouse. We had realy good sailing with this up. I don't really know why I took it down. Maybe I was being over cautious. Taking it down was a big mistake as it meant that we lost speed. Coupled with a poor navigational choice (going too far north into Broad Sound between Skomer and Skokholm Islands) meant that we got well and truly stuffed by the tide in Broad Sound. The first time we tried to get through, it was clear that we were going to hit Skomer rather than make it through the sound (Skomer is rocky and uninviting from a shipwreck perspective). We took a more southerly course the second time and made it through very slowly. There must have been a 6 knot tide against us at one point. Unfortunately we had to do the sound under engine to make sure we got through.

I saw some other boats in South Haven at Skomer and so assumed that it must be ok to anchor there. I got here after sunset and anchored in the gloaming. My first attempt at anchoring didn't work (my first failure). It was obvious that it hadn't worked and second time seems to have been lucky. The iPad is going to be on anchor watch duty again tonight!

Skomer is as beautiful as ever. It is a really special place. The seas around it are full of birds. There are puffins swimming around in the water around the island. There are birds squawking outside as I write this and I heard some seals on the shore earlier. It's a really special place.

The aim tomorrow is to get to the Gower. We'll have to see how that goes. I can't face getting up too early and so the day will start with a slog against the tide before the tide takes us round the south of pembrokeshire to Tenby.

Anchored at Cahore Point

A nicely place anchor at Cahore Point. I even fashioned a chaffing protector out of some spare hose to protect the anchor rope.

[text written a couple of days later]

I obviously have not yet mastered my iPad alarm clock. Instead of waking to the sound of cuckoos, I woke up as the sun was getting high in the sky. It must have been 0930 when I got up. I had had quite a big day yesterday, so a lie in was not unreasonable.

It was a difficult day to sail. There was not much wind. We sailed a bit out of Dun Laoghaire and in a few other places, but there was also quite a lot of motoring going on. Other boats were motoring too. The wind only really started to kick in when we got to the anchorage: Cahore Point. The problem was that the wind was from the wrong direction and was going to make the anchorage a pretty bumpy affair.

The Wicklow hills looked good on the way down. The Great Sugar Loaf is a fantastic feature: a little mountain that really does need climbing. Some of the higher Wicklow Hills looked like rounded boggy things. That isn't to say that they aren't nice hills: just that they are rounded and boggy. The other interesting spot was Arklow Hill. This is a roadstone quarry. They have quarried most of the hill away. There is a separate port for the quarry. It's odd to see an almost decapitated hill like that.

The weather started off dull and overcast, with the Wicklow Hills covered in low cloud, but by the end of the day it was a real scorcher: bright blue skies and it got pretty hot. This made lounging around on the boat quite a pleasant affair.

[text written at the anchorage, on the day]

Cervisia is now anchored off a place called Polduff at Cahore point. I have quite a lot of chain and rope out on the anchor and the anchor seems to be quite well set. The forecast is for variable winds with some northerly component. This is not exactly the best wind for this anchorage as it is exposed to northerly winds. I think the winds will not be too strong and we should be ok. I will have the iPad on anchor watch, so if we do drift, it will wake me up. If the winds pick up, it will probably also get wavy and this will also wake me up. I think we will be ok. It is nice being at anchor again. I am not sure I will touch dry land again until Portshead!

I am hoping to get up quite early as it will be a long crossing. That was my aim this morning too, but we didn't set off until 0930. I was tired after the day in the Wicklow Hills and I haven't yet mastered my iPad alarm clock!

I am hoping that I get woken by the time alarm and not the anchor alarm!

Wicklow Hills

Wednesday was forecast to be a windy day and the wind was forecast from the south west. This would have been a pain to deal with so I decided to go walking instead. The tourist information place told me that there was one bus a day into the Wicklow hills and that if I was quick, I could catch it. I did a quick rush pack, got on the train to a place called Bray and then caught the bus with minutes to spare. The bus goes to a place called Glendalough. This is one valley over from the highest mountain in the range. Glendalough is famous for a collection of really ancient churches and monasteries. It is in a beautiful setting at the base of a valley sweeping up into the mountains. There were a lot of tourists there!

I started the walk up the Glen, but was drawn to the ancient churches. It was a really interesting spot with several ruined churches, ancient graves and a really interesting rapunzel tower that had no door at the bottom, but had windows at the top. What was it used for?

I walked high up the south easy side of Glendalough and then back via some mines and the lakes along the valley floor. Even though I didn't get up a summit, it was a really nice lout windows walk. It would be interesting to know what they were mining. I suspect it was gold as I think that there is gold in that area.

I planned to walk along the Wicklow Way back to Bray. This looked like a hilly 20 miles back. I think this estimate was right. What I hadn't really counted on was that I had already walked about 10 miles and was quite tired. I also didn't have much water. It was however well worth the walk. There are some really nice changing views. One of the best bits was view to a mountain called something like Lugulla. It had a big granite cliff on it. There must be some good granite climbing in Wicklow. I ran the downhills and walked the uphills in order to make the best time possible. I needed to do this. Towards the end I got up to the summit of the oddly named Djouce Mountain. There were good views over the northern hills and down to the sunlit Great Sugar Loaf mountain (which despite being just 500m is a great mountain shape and would be a fine objective). I then ran down to the Powerscourt waterfall - which is really quite impressive and unexpected. Once back in the valley, I found that there were no public footpaths and I would have to go back along the roads. This is a real problem with Ireland: there is good scenery, but you can only really enjoy it from the road, apart from the odd exception such as the Wicklow Way.

I reached a town about 4 miles from Bray where there was a good bus service into town. The was a garage next to the bus stop and I gorged myself on ice cream and sparkling water. I was quite dehydrated. From Bray, I caught the train into Dun Laoghaire, bought some diesel for tomorrow, cooked and then went to bed. Tomorrow the plan is to get down the coast to a place called Cahore Point, ready for the crossing of the Irish Sea.

Ardglass to Dun Laoghaire

As predicted, I woke up to some pretty fresh winds. It looked like the winds were going to be in a reasonable direction, so that wasn't too bad. We left at about 0830 with a J109. We saw it for a few hours and then it was off over the horizon.

The sea state outside the harbour was quite wavy. There was a good little wind on the quarter of cervisia. Would be a really good wind for getting to the Dublin area. For the first 3 hours we did have great and fast sailing. There were lovely views of the Mourne mountains to the west. I remembered doing two Mourne mountain marathons there. Happy days. I would like to go back some time.

After the wind died, it was another case of engine on, engine off most of the way to Dun Laoghaire. The wind kept shifting direction quite rapidly. At one stage we would be going exactly where we wanted to go, then it would push us towards land until we could tack and then we would be heading in exactly the right direction again. It was weird.

We closed land again at a place called Lambay Island which is about 10 miles north of Dublin Bay. There were loads of seabirds around there, flying together. They may have been Manx shearwater. An interesting bird I saw earlier was something like a mini frigate bird. It would chase gulls (or some other white gull-like bird) until the white bird dropped whatever it had caught. The frigate bird would then catch the regurgitated fish in mid air, then harry the gull some more for good measure. It was very interesting behaviour, especially given that I'd seen real frigate birds in Barbuda, but never worked out how they actually managed to get another bird to drop its food. By the terrified squawking sounds coming from the white bird, it looked like sheer persistence and tiring the opposition out worked.

It got dark near Howth and then we had Dublin Bay to cross in the dark. Given how fickle the wind had been, I decided to just motor across the bay. We could have tacked, but it would have taken some time and that didn't seem to be necessary at the time of night. We got moored up in the Marina at midnight and then I went to bed. It had been a long day.

Bangor to Ardglass

I am back on board Cervisia now, aiming to take her back from Bangor in Northern Ireland to Portishead. I am a little nervous about what the weather has in store for us over the coming week, but so far things are looking quite positive. I have scrapped the initial pan to go back along the welsh coast and am now planning on sailing down the east side or Ireland and then crossing the bottom of the Irish Sea on either Thursday or Friday.

Today I have had a bit of a mixed sail from Bangor to Ardglass. We started off in nice sunshine and ok winds. There was some interesting navigation between some islands and the mainland at Donagnadee Sound. We did this passage against the tide and in light winds. It took quite a lot of time.

The wind has been a bit odd all day really. It has shifted massively in direction throughout the day over short periods of time and has also changed in strength. Towards the end of the day the wind died completely and we had to motor for the last three hours. We got an absolute drenching just before that in quite an intensive rain shower.

What has been quite nice all day has been the views of the Mourne mountains. They started out just popping up behind lower hills closer by, but now in Ardglass they look pretty close and large. I think I will see them all day tomorrow as long as the weather holds out.

I am going to have to get up early tomorrow to make the most of the day. I am hoping to get somewhere near Dublin but I suspect that I won't get quite that far. I just have to hope that the wind behaves.

I might find it difficult to update the blog when in the Republic due to roaming charges. I should be back in the uk on Friday night. Whether I land somewhere with coverage is not totally clear. There might be somewhere in the republic with wifi where I can update the blog instead.

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!

Dark approach to Stranraer

I am on my own again now. I left Royston in Troon on Friday morning. We had a great meal last night at Scotties above the Marina in Troon. Stone packed his bags and then left this morning. I took the opportunity to walk to Morrisons with him and stock up on some food and fuel for the next stage of the voyage.

The basic goal now is to get to Bangor in Northern Ireland. I have free berthing there for a few weeks so I plan to leave her there and then pick her up at the start of June for another week's holiday and to bring her back to Portoshead. The first stage of this plan was to get her to Loch Ryan. It is then nominally a short hop across to Bangor.

The problem I had getting to Stranraer was the wind. Initially there was insufficient wind and I had to take cervisia back into the marina to change the headsail for a bigger one. For the first couple of hours at sea, this seemed like it had been a good idea. It was when I was off the Heads of Ayr wishing for stronger winds that it became apparent that the opposite was true.

The wind suddenly picked up to above 20 knots and it stayed that way, or stronger, all the way to Loch Ryan. I had big reefs in both sails and it was hard work tacking into this wind. The sea state also got up and there were waves around that were exactly the wrong size for Cervisia. We didn't make good progress into these seas but had to keep going. I think there was probably something wrong with the way we were sailing. Either we had too much sail up or we were trying to go too close to the wind. I'm going to have to sort this out.

The weather was nothing special either. As well as the strong winds, it started to rain. When the wind gets up towards 30 knots and it is raining, you need to show stoicism and zeal to keep going. What helps on Cervisia is that she had a Sea Feather self steering gear. I attached this and tried to get as much shelter in the cockpit or cabin as possible.

There was a tantalising time when we were off Girvan. This place has a little marina and would have been a really well positioned place - given that I was outside it at about 8pm. The problem was that there were waves around and it was low tide. I don't know if the waves would have been onshore, bit I didn't want to risk it. We pressed on towards Loch Ryan and the darkness.

We had a long night in the dark. It is nice to see the lighthouses as they give you an indication of where the coast is and they make you feel that you are not alone out there. It was even better when I could see some of the Loch Ryan buoys flashing: this meant that I was close.

The dodgy thing about entering Loch Ryan was that there are lots of ferries coming in and out. You get a warning as they announce the ferry movements on the VHF. I don't know if this makes things better or worse. When you hear that there is a ferry, you have to really look round to try and identify it by it's lights against the background street lights. We dodged about 3 of them, tacking in the dark.

I had hoped to use an anchorage at the north of Loch Ryan, but there was a strong onshore wind there and it seemed like a bad idea. We had to go another 5 miles to Stranraer at the south end of the loch where there is a little marina that is sheltered from the winds. We had to tack down the channel into Stranraer at nigh, avoiding the shoal patches to the side and the ferries. It was a bit nerve wracking. On the final approach, we could stop tacking and the sea state subsided. We then had a really nice little close reach sail into Stranraer at 1am.

I got cervisia tied up in the marina, then got the electricity and the heater on to dry my clothes, ready for the next day. It was 2am before we were properly sorted out and nearly 3am before I got to bed.
All in all it was a hard day. I think I learnt a lot and know what I need to improve on. It was the first time i'd been out tacking into a force 6. It is nice to know that it works. The good thing I'd that by doing this long hard day, I have broken the back of the voyage to Bangor and can look forward to a more comfortable, if no less windy sail on Saturday (we will not have to go straight into the wind).

Cervisia in Stranraer marina on Saturday morning: a big Stena ferry worth dodging in the background