Becalmed.
Tides and gate times meant another longer day on the water, and this time I would be singlehanded.
To be honest, I sat at home at 07.30 with two dogs asleep across me, I thought about the pretty dull 2-1/2 to 3-hour journey (and the same back, obviously), and I thought about what sailing singlehanded entailed (casting off from the berth and mooring back up afterwards are particularly scary things), and I got paralysed by fear. I texted the good lady wife her indoors that I wasn’t going. She responded with typical bluntness. ‘Give yourself a kick up the arse, get in the car and bloody get up there. You’ll enjoy it once you’re on the water.’ Obviously, I obeyed orders.
One long, dull car journey later, I cast off at 11.15, radioed the marina that I was underway and would be leaving. They responded by saying the gate would be shut in 30 minutes (which I knew), and that gave me the chills. The gate was due to reopen at 18.15 which meant I’d be out on open water for seven hours, by myself. In for a penny, I thought. The whole idea of owning an ocean-going yacht was to do some actual ocean-going. I swallowed my nerves and got on with it. Nowhere to go except out there, no layby to pull in to if I got into difficulty. Just me, the boat, and the sea.
I did everything by the book, followed the marked shipping channel down the Conwy and out into the bay. The wind, down the Conwy, was 18kts gusting to 24kts. I thought I might have to put a reef in the mainsail when I got clear of the mainland. Once out past the channel entrance marker, I pointed the boat into the wind, put the autopilot on, pulled in the fenders, and hoisted the mainsail. The day was warm; blue sky with some broken cloud, but out here the wind was much lighter at 8kts. I put that down to being in wind shadow of the mainland. I adjusted course and trim, then went below and put the kettle on.
When I came back on deck the wind was still at 8kts but the sea had levelled out a bit. I unfurled the genoa and set course for the open sea where I hoped to pick up a bit more than 8kts of wind. When I was 10nm offshore I was still struggling to find much wind; the sea-state stubbornly remained 3 (waves from 0.5 to 1.25m – ‘slight’), and the anemometer refused to break more than 8kts. Still, no matter. I was sailing. Singlehanded. The boat’s bow was currently pointing in the direction of Dublin. I had no passage plan as such, I was just out there, on the water, sailing. By myself. I mentally thanked the good lady wife her indoors for her pep talk.
By now the day had turned from warm to hot, the clouds were slowly disappearing and the blue sky looked Mediterranean. Atmospherics did some tricky things to the radio. I heard a very clear call on the VHF that signed off as ‘Belfast Coastguard’. Oh well. I changed course, pointed northwards by 15 degrees and trimmed my sails, in the hope of finding more wind, but bizarrely I found even less. The anemometer dropped to 5kts. There were not many other boats out. On the very far horizon I could see (with binoculars) the shape of a huge freighter, probably out of Liverpool. There were yacht sails down towards the Menai, and another yacht north-west of the Colwyn Bay windfarm. I heard Belfast Coastguard very clearly on the VHF again. And Holyhead Coastguard, obviously.
A couple of hours later I gybed to the west, looking for more wind, and I found even less. I watched the sails slacken, the tell-tales hung limply, the anemometer slipped from 5kts to 2kts, and the sea become flat as a pond. So I did what any sensible sailor would do under these conditions, I put the autopilot on, went below, made myself another brew and brought the basket of food into the cockpit. The good lady wife her indoors makes a very good basket of food. I sat in the cockpit listening to the gentle slap of wavelets against the hull, and tucked in to my feast.
Around 14.00 the wind picked up to 12kts, so I changed course to pick up as much as possible, trimmed the sails, and went sailing. We easily reached 6kts SOG with as little as 5-degrees of heel. Ten minutes later most of the wind off the coast of North Wales just packed its bags and went home. I limped along in 6kts of wind which gave me 3kts SOG. I ate more food.
Shortly after 15.00 a Feeling 1090 closed on my position. They remained about 100m away, but it was clear we were both trying to read the sea and looking for the same wind. Neither of us found it. For the next two hours I fruitlessly tried all sorts of sail trim and course changes, but nothing gave any speed, and the anemometer occasionally dipped down to 0kts. I was becalmed.
I had two hours to fill until I needed to make slow tracks back to the marina, so I got out one of my sets of tools and measured things, photographed things, planned to fix/fit things and generally did stuff I could have done in the marina. There was no movement from the boat at all. Then I went belowdecks and went exploring. I found a locker I didn’t know existed and pulled a sail-bag out. It looked like it held a spinnaker but I decided to bring the sail-bag home to unpack. I moved back up on to the deck, sipped some pop, ate more food and mentally made a list of jobs to do (I’ll add these to the joblist in due course).
At 17.00 I started the engine, dropped the mainsail, furled the genoa, put the fenders out, tidied the cockpit and started to motor slowly back to Deganwy. The Feeling 1090, which was some distance south of me, saw what I was up to and followed my lead. I watched them stow their sails and heard their engine clearly across the water.
I did things by the book again, and followed the shipping channel markers back up the Conwy. Less than halfway home the wind picked up and hit a constant 18kts gusting to 23kts. The Feeling 1090 closed on my stern so I gave them room to manoeuvre and indicated that they should pass me if that was their intention. They did. 15 minutes later I passed them as they were tracking up and down the river, waiting for the Conwy Marina gate to open. The wind showed no sign of reducing, so on approach, I radioed the marina and asked if there was anyone available to give me a hand landing the boat.
In my limited experience I have never encountered wind like that *inside* the marina. Normally Deganwy Marina is sheltered from the wind. This time the wind was belting down the river, across the face of the marina, and was hitting the side of the boat hard. I had three attempts at mooring, but each time the wind blew me off the pontoon and out of position. I had forward and reverse, but couldn’t turn – every time I attempted, I’d get through 90-degrees to 180-degrees then the wind would hit the boat and frustrate the turning circle. Help came in the shape of two chaps, a marina member of staff, and a liveaboard owner. Between the three of us we got the boat moored onto the pontoon. I was very thankful for their assistance.
I shut the engine and electrics down, stowed everything away, put the sail-bag and all my stuff ashore, locked up, and took the keys back to the marina office. As I left the marina office I couldn’t help noticing that the wind had *completely* disappeared again.
Total time on the water: 7-1/2 hours. Total distance on the log, 24nm.