This was to be a short trip of just under 20 miles, on familiar territory, back to Moondog's home marina. Nevertheless, as always in this part of the world we were slaves to the tides, and particularly so here since we would be passing through the infamous Swellies, between the Menai bridges near Bangor.

 

We were more or less at spring tides, so elected to be at the Swellies just before high water slack, and be carried by the last of the east flowing tide, so that we would keep the good tide down the rest of the Straits to Conwy. Had we waited an extra half hour to pass through the Swellies at absolute slack water ( as normally advised ) it would be likely that we would be punching some bad tide further down the Straits, which would slow us down. This would be a problem, since we needed to get into the Conwy river by noon in order to avoid hitting the ebb tide coming out of the river after about 1230 ; we would have still been able to get in, but with a tide running at 3 kts plus it would have been very slow.

All of this translated into locking out of Port Dinorwic at 0920 , after the now customary excitement with long ropes, and then pottering down the Straits towards the bridges whilst eating breakfast. We passed under the Britannia Bridge and followed the normal devious route, with Sian and Naomi helping with transits, and then taking care with the turn by Swellie rock , given that the tide was still running at 2 kts and tends to push you sideways towards the rock as you turn to starboard. It is all fine so long as you know what is going on and have done it before ; the first time is rather more exciting ! In any event, with the high tide we could in reality go almost anywhere and be safe, but it is good to keep to the standard course so that it is more or less instinctive, and it will keep you safe whatever the water level.

 

In no time at all we were passing under the old Menai suspension bridge and heading towards Bangor,with its old Victorian pier, and Beaumaris with its castle. There was general agreement, on this sunny still morning, that this was the prettiest part of the whole trip, and it did raise the question as to why we had gone accross the Irish Sea, rather than just sailed around the Menai Straits and Anglesey. As you will see from the pictures, this is a fair point and not easily answered......

 

We were soon passing Beaumaris, still keeping the last of the favourable tide. We were then intending to 'cut the corner' and use the Penmaen Swatch across the mudflats to Conwy. Sian and Naomi were navgators for this stretch, armed with the various bearings to take to identify the turn points, to keep in deep water, and watching our distance travelled...with Phil taking the helm and following his daughters' instructions without question. This all worked fine, after some initial confusion as to which of 3 radio masts we were supposed to be using for our first bearing. There was a sense of deja vu with this, since I had the same problem on an earlier yachtmaster test here. I can only assume that there was only one mast when the pilot book was written, and now there are three. For those who might pass this way,use the lattice mast closest to the water ! 

We were soon entering the Conwy river bouyed channel, and were passing down the river right on high water , with no tide, which was just about perfect. After a quick bit of dodging boats around the fuel berth we were tied up at our old pontoon, with the cruise over....apart from cleaning and tidying up .....

 

 Moondog had done 630 miles since leaving Deganwy at 0010 on 28 May, having spent a week moored in the Isle of Man waiting for gales to subside, and she passed the 2000 mile barrier in cumulative distance travelled since launch last year. Many thanks to Jody, Alan, Gordon, Phil, Sian and Naomi for all their help crewing, and to Cathy and Michael in Peel for looking after Moondog whilst she was riding out the gales there for a week. It will be day sailing now through July and August, and then perhaps another trip in September for a week or so.

 

 

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Brian Whitefoot

 

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