The tides are critical for this leg to Peel (54:13.4N, 004:42.0W), since we had to catch all the south flowing flood down the entrance to the Irish Sea along the Galloway coast, where the stream was going to reach a couple of kts. This may not sound much, but it turns a 5kt boat speed into 7 kts over the ground. Get it wrong and it turns the 5 kts into 3 kts. It is easy to double the time a trip can take if you get the tide wrong.  On this occasion we also had an added benefit, since we were having to travel north for the first 9 miles, to get up Loch Ryan, before we doubled back on ourselves to sail south down the coast. This meant that we caught the last of the north flowing tide to help push us out of Loch Ryan, and then all the south stream which would start just as we exited the Loch and turned south.

Well, that was the theory, and it was a good reason to get up at 6am and leave at 7am.  Fortunately the tides actually worked as expected. Even better, in fact, because we were close enough to the middle of the Isle of Man when the tide turned again to be in the area where the tides split and the stream rates are quite small. As a result of all this our speed over the ground hardly dropped below 6 kts, hitting 8.6 kts for one hour.  Overall, approximately 65 miles in 9.5 hours.

The weather was good, with F4 winds all day. Once again it was motorsailing into a SW wind most of the day, but our fastest speed of 8.6 kts over the ground was actually under sail alone, when the wind backed a little as we also headed a little more due west, which combined to give us a good beam reach for a while.

The final element of our tidal plan was to get into Peel within 2 hours of high tide, after which the tidal sill to the marina would be closed until the next high water. We made it with half an hour to spare...perfect. 

Peel marina is very pleasant, and after covering just over 100 miles in two days, we elected for the next day to be a rest day in Peel.  Many thanks to Cathy and Michael for feeding us at lunch time and providing a quick tour of the south of the Island.