We stayed in Kilmore Quay for 4 days, waiting for bad
weather to blow thru. It blew and it
rained, and there was one sunny day, and one cloudy day. We took a day trip up to Wexford and walked
around a very nice town that seems to have retained its down-town shopping area
quite well. It would certainly be a
destination for sailors if the entrance had not silted up, and made it
extremely difficult to enter. The bus service was decent, and there was a Dunne’s
in town that we used for a moderate shopping trip.
On our return, we tried to get a cappuccino at one of the
local eateries, but even though it was a Lavazza (our favorite), it came out of
a completely automatic machine, and did not taste very good. However, we also took this opportunity to
check out the local chandlery, which turned out to be extraordinary. All sorts of parts and tools and equipment
that were really useful, not just a pile of junk, and all at very reasonable
prices. It even had stainless steel pipe
fittings, including small elbows and tees and valves in 316SS that were prepped
for welding(!). The guys at the counter
said that they had a local fabricator who was very good at TIG welding, so with
the demand there from the fishing boats, and a reasonable supply of labor, they
supplied the parts. Quite astounding,
and impressive. One of us, at least, had some severe engineer envy about this place. We should have visited it sooner....
Crossing St. Georges Channel (August 26)
The harbormaster advised us to wait till 9AM to depart, on the
theory that we would not have to fight the tide going out, but we decided to
leave at 7. There was a fleet of about 6
other boats from the UK in the marina that
had the same idea. They had come over
for a two-week holiday, most of them single-handing, and had gotten beat-up
quite seriously, several times. They
wanted to get back and stop the beatings, and there appeared to be a short
window of opportunity, so they were leaving at 6AM. Since we were a bit bigger than they
(32-38ft), we decided to have morning tea first.
The sun had just coming up, and there was not a cloud in the
sky when we left. It was just before low
tide, but we didn’t have any problems crossing St. Patrick’s causeway, which
was covered with ripples from the tidal rips.
With a journey of about 75 miles ahead of us, it was important to make
good time, so we motor-sailed the entire way, averaging about 7.5 kts. The wind started off astern, but then it
backed and by noon we were on a nice beam reach at 7.5-8.3 kts. Without the engine we would have been doing
about 6 kts.
We passed the flotilla of small boats about 2 hours after we
left. They did not seem to want to
motor-sail, so they were only doing about 3-4 kts. We think that they must eventually have
started their engines – the clouds started to build after noon, and the wind,
as well, and no one wanted to be outside Milford Haven that night. The seas for this leg of the trip started “slight”,
but eventually progressed to “moderate”, with swell heights of 1-3 meters. Luckily for us, the swells came from the SW
and had a pretty long period, so it was not at all uncomfortable. The final leg into Milford Haven got a bit
lumpy, as the tidal flow coming out of MH met the wind and the ocean swells,
but once inside everything was flat.
Milford Haven
Milford Haven is quite large, and the ships that come in and
out are also quite large. It is one of
the largest tanker ports in Europe, with refineries on both sides and major
ship berths everywhere. Last year we
stayed on a visitor’s pontoon that is put out each year by the Dale Yacht Club in
the NW corner of the estuary. It was blowing a bit last year, and the
pontoon bucked around quite a bit, so this year it was clear that we could not
stay there in any sort of southerly blow, so this year we headed upstream.
We passed at least a dozen large tankers at their piers,
probably 5 refineries/chemical complexes, and one significant ferry terminal,
as well as a bunch of small-boat moorings and one marina (Milford Marina),
before we reached our goal – the Neyland Yacht Haven. By this time (5PM), the wind was starting to
get up, but when we called the marina, they told us that they didn’t have any
room. Not even anywhere for us to raft
up. And the other marina back behind us
was no longer available because of its tidal lock. This is the first time that this has happened to us.
Any Mooring in a Blow (August 26-28)
We looked around at anchoring options in the river, and noticed a number of empty mooring buoys on the other side. One of them seemed to be substantial, but not like something to be used by a commercial vessel, so we picked it up for the night. We think it may have been put out by either a yacht club or a chandlery on the south side of the river, but since it is bank holiday season here, no one came out to collect any fees.
We spent two nights on this pontoon. The wind mounted thru the night, and the rain
started the next morning, and it was great weather to just sleep in. We did not have any internet connection, at
first, but we did have good reception of UK TV stations, so the main amusement
at first was boat chores/mods and UK TV.
Then, we discovered a significant house insurance crisis that needed to
be resolved, and spent the money to connect to the internet to be able to
send/receive documents to our agents.
The Ubiquiti Bullet external antenna that we mounted this
year is quite outstanding for this sort of thing, and we cannot say too much
nice about it. Sitting in the middle of
the river, about ¾ mile from the access point in the marina, in a blowing
rainstorm, it provided great connectivity.
We have even figured out how to use it and one computer to provide
internet connectivity to multiple devices inside the boat from one paid
connection. We used to be able to do
this with the Vonage router, but ISPs do not seem to like to feed thru the Vonage
box. After a while they cut off the
connection. So, a “virtual router”
application on one computer that is connected to the Ubiquiti Bullet does the
trick.
The only downside of this is that it takes a bit of AC
power, so we had to run the genset for a few hours while we got things sorted
out, to keep from running down the ship’s batteries too much. The windmill was putting out quite a bit of
power, but the solar panels were ueless, so we were training the
batteries. At least with the genset
running we could also heat water and run the microwave with no reservations.
Neyland Marina (August 28)
Today we changed the plan (again). We had planned to leave Milford Haven at 4AM,
headed to Padstow. The goal was to make
the opening of the gates at Padstow (from 2:30 to 5:30PM), and tuck in for the
blow that is coming tomorrow. However,
on the way over from Kilmore Quay we noticed that the leech of the jib had
blown out. We don’t know where/when this
happened, but it was not a minor tear that we could patch up. We needed a sailmaker, and there is one here
in Milford Haven, right across from the Neyland Marina. So, the plans change
again. We will stay here till Friday,
when it appears that the winds will finally turn in our favor. The sail is being repaired, and should be
done on Thursday. We will leave early on
Friday AM, and try to make it all the way to la belle France in one shot. We should be able to do it in about 36 hours,
and get in somewhere before dark on Saturday.
If the conditions are good enough, we may even try to get down to Glenans.
Dante and the Lion
Our gentle readers are probably wondering at this point when
we are going to explain the title to this post. Well, we have been hearing on the TV for the
last few days a story about a sighting of a lion in Essex (a country northeast
of London), and our first reaction was to check that Dante was still on
board. He was. He hasn’t left the boat since Howth.
 |
| Great British Journalism |
The TV reported that all of the normal sources of lions
(zoos, circuses, etc) could account for all of their animals, and no one had
been allowed to own one privately in the UK for quite a while. So, we made a lot of jokes to one another
about how maybe they had seen a large Maine Coon cat. Well, it turns out that the jokes were spot-on (as they
say here).
 |
| Milford Haven Lion |
And, of course, with the sensitivity about lions invading
Britain, Dante caused quite a stir here in Milford Haven. He jumped down on the pontoon as soon as he
could, and wandered off to the stern of the boat next door, where he found a
great stern platform to plop down and consider the great questions of the
feline world (whatever they are). He
also seems to have wandered a bit further down the pontoon, and was spotted by
several people who reported him to the harbor-masters, who came around to check
out the situation. They said that they
had never seen a boat carrying cats, so the sight of a very large cat prowling
around their marina was a new experience.
And, a very nice lady on the boat ahead of us was also quite surprised
to see him, but since she is a cat person, she knew how to admire and adore him
in the manner to which he has become accustomed.
All-in-all, not a bad
place to wait out another blow that is expected tonight.
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