The four-day Bank Holiday weekend and the sailing club combined to offer me a four-day singlehanded passage to/from the Isle of Man. This didn’t happen, unfortunately, but I’d spent so long psyching myself up for the passage and the pre-dawn departure it would have needed, that I felt a bit flat when the trip was cancelled. Deflated even. So I came up with my own Plan B, a (subject to conditions) combined night/day singlehanded trip:
I left the berth at Deganwy at 00.15 on Saturday 4th June and motored down the Conwy in the pitch blackness. This was scary. There are about 40 mooring buoys in the Conwy, almost all of them with boats attached, and none of them are lit. It was totally dark, there was no moon. I left via the channel on the Deganwy (not the Conwy) side of the river, because I felt I had a better memory of what buoys and boats were moored where. I didn’t get too close to anything and didn’t have to make any rapid course corrections, but it was still a very scary thing to do in the dark.
Once out of the river instead of following the normal shipping channel I took the shortcut that kept me close to Great Orme, so I was shielded from the wind. As I moved out into the bay I turned into the wind, hoisted the mainsail and unfurled the Genoa. Then, even though the wind was a comfortable 9kts at that point, I dropped the main and put a reef in (the golden rule is to reef early) and then hoisted the mainsail back up again. Then I turned back onto track and followed the line of the Orme out into the open sea.
As soon as I rounded the head of Great Orme the wind hit hard. The forecast had been for 8-12kts of westerly breeze, a comfortable sailing wind. What hit me broadside-on was a Force 5, 21kts of wind; it had whipped up the sea into a very confused state; large lumpy waves, breaking white horses all around me. The boat started rolling as I tried to continue making way, close-hauled.
After what seemed like an age of not making much headway, I mentally threw Plan B out and came up with Plan C, a much shorter passage back to Deganwy, but going back via the main shipping channel:
I turned the boat about, took a hasty bearing on the Fairway buoy (the seaward end of the main shipping channel), and ran before the freshening wind. The anemometer showed windspeed fluctuating between 21kts to 27kts (Force 6). I put the safety harness on, turned the boat to meet the wind beam-on, dropped the main (not easy with the wind in that position, but I didn’t fancy turning the boat a full 180° to put the wind onto the boat’s nose), went forward to the mast, put two more reefs in, then crabbed my way back into the cockpit and hoisted the shortened mainsail back up. That was pretty scary too. The pitch blackness combined with the strong wind, the breaking white horses, and the rolling sea all combined to make everything very threatening. Don’t ask me how, it just did.
Back in the cockpit the instruments showed that Good Mood had really picked herself up and was responding to the conditions. Despite being fully reefed and only showing a little Genoa (I had almost completely furled it up), and despite the very rolly sea, the log showed us reaching a fraction over 7kts which is pretty swift. Despite being a little nervous/borderline scared, I was impressed with how balanced and stable the boat felt; the sea didn’t once come over the toerails, and I was only occasionally spattered with droplets of spray. But it was a very scary character-building experience.
From Waypoint 3 back to the Fairway the wind was starboard beam-on. That leg of the passage was an uncomfortable sail, buffeted by wind that occasionally hit 27kts, the rolling waves and the confused sea, but because we were under such a small amount of sail the boat hardly ever heeled past 10°, and yet made a steady 6kts over the ground.
By 04.30 I was back in the marina. I did have to radio the marina staff and ask for help berthing; I’d had three attempts at getting onto the pontoon, but every time I got close to the berth and almost in position to drop a line over a pontoon cleat, the wind blew me out of position again. But this is a small point.
The experience has taught me a bit about me, a bit more about the boat, and has given me a total distrust in the weather forecast.
Next up, I need to spend a day on the boat doing some not-sailing duties. Cockpit instrumentation needs a hard look, the Chartplotter needs tidying-up, I need to get on top of the AIS installation, and the bow needs an inspection while I figure out what I need to do for the new anchor installation.
Time on the water: 2h 45m. Distance covered: 15nm