From Howth to Caernarfon (a hard night for Gina, an embarrassing moment for John…)
Leaving Howth marina after 10 days of terrestrial life was like a new start.
Conscious of the difficulties I had when steering China Blue in reverse, I had had plenty time to imagine a strategy to leave the pontoon without touching anything. It was clearly the only difficulty I could think of regarding our next navigation.
As for the rest, including the crossing of the Menai Straits Bar, I totally relied on John. Since the beginning of our voyage, he had volunteered for planning our routes on the paper charts, taking into account tides and currents. I must admit I didn’t mind leaving that job to him.
China Blue in Howth Marina
The sun was still above the horizon at 20:30, as we pulled the last mooring line on board. Well thought of, the manoeuvre went exceptionally fine, making me feel very confident for the rest. With a certain panache, I aimed China Blue’s bow into the buoyed channel.
It was at this exact moment that a fleet of sailing yachts who had been racing in the afternoon, started to enter the channel in our opposite direction, closely following each other. John was standing by the front mast, looking ahead, waving orders: “more to port… more to port…”, then frantically turning at me yelling “MORE TO PORT!”!
Thinking better, anxious to avoid a close encounter with any of the incoming yachts, I deliberately ignored his orders up to the point of (horror!) leaving a red buoy on our portside.
Within the same minute, there was a rattling sound under the boat, and everything stopped.
Full throttle forwards, full throttle reverse. It stirred a lot of mud; however, we were definitely grounded.
I believe at that moment John could have thrown me overboard in the murky water, if he had had a block of concrete heavy enough to have me stay there.
Not only had I ignored his helping orders. The worse thing for his ego was to endure the hardly concealed mocking looks from the crews of a good dozen yachts entering the marina.
No need to say I felt utterly stupid. I have a qualification as a motor boat driving instructor. I’m supposed to know on which side to let the red buoys when leaving a harbour, and teach that to people.
The marina staff, to whom we thought we had already said good bye for good, arrived with 2 powerful wooden barks. After having to wait for all the incoming yachts to have passed by, they managed to drag us out of our trap. So much for the panache.
Then we were gone.
En route to Wales
The incident was soon diluted in the early hours of the evening. The sky was a dark blue velvet, there was a little breeze, but due to my catastrophic departure we hadn’t unleashed the sails and we kept motoring, as the sea was beginning to strengthen. Besides, we had a schedule to meet.
We kept a good watch for any light on the horizon. The night fell, and we learned to recognize the powerful lights of the fishing boats, the Christmas-like lights of passengers ferries, and the very sober 3 lights of cargos.
Around three in the morning, the sea got choppy. Then very choppy. The wind was blowing strong.
China Blue was again rolling, pitching and yawing in all directions. Darkness saved us from seeing the height of the waves that were throwing us from side to side, hitting us right on starboard.
John and I took turns on the helm. Gina alternated between vomiting and being sick. There was no fun anymore, all we could do was motor ahead, holding the tiller with both hands to keep the boat on course. We didn’t dare going out on deck to set up any kind of sail.
Marc had texted us a very helpful chartlet of the buoyed channel into the Menai straits, but John was concerned about arriving at the Caernarfon bar in time for the tide. We increased our RPMs, and China Blue started to fight her way at 7 knots through the confused sea.
We felt sorry for Gina. For her first sail on China Blue, we had set the bar a little too high. Exhausted, tired of being sick, she was clinging in despair to the hoven bar in the galley and hung there for the rest of the night.
We were supposed to cross the bar at 10:00. But we had motored too fast, and were nearly there at 07:00. We decided to kill time by zig-zaging. This gave us a little rest, for we would sail into the waves for half an hour, then down the waves for the next half hour.
Facing the waves, China Blue felt better, her bow pointing to the sky before falling back, crushing water in impressive flurries of foam. We felt she was undestroyable.
Turning around and surfing the swell, was a relieving ride, as long as we could keep her stern to the waves.
But as soon as we started to make way again towards our destination, waves hitting us on starboard made life on board a hell.
We eventually entered Caernarfon bar channel. The sea got flat; Gina started to smile again.
John was at the bow once more, carefully following Marc’s written instructions. Again, pointing me directions with his arms stretched out, shouting on top of it to be sure I understood.
Which I didn’t necessarily do. Having learned the lesson from the evening before, I felt a big enough boy to follow a buoyed channel by myself. I held him for being over-cautious, and was more prone to cut corners. OK, I went once again on the wrong side of a green marker, but hell, who had put this marker there anyway?!
The entrance of Caernarfon marina, on our starboard side, was quite narrow. A strong current was pushing us ahead. John was again shouting for me to aim “more to starboard, more to starboard!”. Trusting only my own idea, I waited until I had a good sight of the marina entrance, but that nearly took us too far.
Moored in Caernarfon
It was only thanks to the combined power of John’s shouting and our reliable engine revving, that I managed to make it through the harbour walls, in a crab-like fashion, miraculously not hitting anything.
Once tied up alongside a big wooden ketch, we had the joy to see our friends Marc and Natalia arrive to meet us. They immediately offered food and shelter, feeling pained for Gina who was hardly starting to recover from her dreadful night.
Caernarfon
Caernarfon was a delightful stop. The city is very picturesque, the weather was great, we had nice friends who welcomed us to their home, there was good wine, good food, good fun. They even invited us to an entertaining evening at the Royal Yacht Club. We had never been in a Yacht Club, let alone a Royal one. Mind you, I find that anything of a little importance in the UK is named “Royal” something. We had a great time anyway.
We stayed six days in Caernarfon. With some emotion, we walked John to the taxi that took him to the railway station. He was going home for good.
Never sailed in the Irish Sea, sounds pretty hair-raising!
Well, mostly it was hard because our course was perpendicular to the waves and the swell.But, apart from Gina being sick, we had no problem standing the situation and we never felt in danger. We could have had better conditions, but also certainly worse!