The last leg!

The tides were once again an important factor on this last leg to Deganwy (53:17.4N, 003:49.7W ).  This is also one of the longest legs of the whole trip, at approximately 77 miles. All in all, there is an element of saving the most challenging to the end.

The tidal factors are a challenge, since the tidal vectors change during the trip. In essence the key elements are set by the need to leave Peel within 2 hours of Peel HW (the only ‘window’ you have to get out of the marina), and the need to arrive at the Conwy River entrance no later than HW+2 hrs (after which it will be impossible to get through the river and into the marina). There are ways around these restrictions, but they all involve ‘parking up’ to sit out a tidal cycle, and add significantly to journey time.

On the trip itself we would hit tide at various stages crossing our path broadly at right angles in each direction, and also on the nose as we left the south of the Isle of Man, and pushing us forward around the west coast of Anglesey. The objective was to minimise the ‘bad tide’ slowing us down around the south of the Isle of Man, and maximising the ‘good tide’ pushing us down the Anglesey coast, which would also minimise any ‘bad tide’ coming out of the Conwy River on arrival...basically, the closest we could hit being at Conwy at HW, the better the trip would be tide wise.

Whatever we did, the mid part of the trip across the sea between the Isle of Man and Anglesey would have an unequal cross tide ( i.e. the west going stream would not cancel the east going), so we would have to build in a course to steer to take out the cross drift from the tide. This saves time, rather than proceeding in a series of zig zags with multiple course corrections.

All of this was fine in theory, but once planned I had to break to the crew the news that to make all this work we would need to slip lines at 3.30am in the morning, i.e. get up at 2.45am. We would then sail the first hour and half in pitch dark, since the weather was forecast to be cloud and rain in the early hours, with no moonlight. I thought they took this rather well, and we were in bed at 9pm for the early start the following day, having got the boat as ready as possible in advance for departure.

0245, dark and showers. We stumbled around waking up, and somehow managed to slip lines and get out of the marina by 0340. Our biggest challenge for the first couple of hours was avoiding lobster pots, which do not mix well with propellers. It has to be said that there is a large element of luck in this in the dark, but to stack the dice in our favour we headed straight out offshore into water more than 30m deep, before heading south. You do get pots in this depth, but much less so then in the shallows. The other element of the plan was to put John on the bow, (with harness line on) to give us a bit more early warning of pots ahead. I learnt later that John spent some time in this position, in rain, spray and cold, unsuccessfully trying to remember what part of this experience could possibly equate to the concept of ’ holiday’.

In any event, the effort was worthwhile, and we missed the pots and could all relax as a rather grey dawn broke, and the rain eased. We were soon round Chicken Rock at the south end of the Isle of Man, punching an adverse tide for a couple of hours as expected. However, with the wind only being a F3 at least we were spared the rough water around Chicken Rock, and in fact were able to ‘cut the corner’ somewhat and go in much closer than I had planned, which probably saved us 45 minutes.

After this it was just a case of setting course and motoring towards Conwy...yes, we were now travelling SE, but guess what...the wind had come round and was now blowing from the SE.....dead on the nose.  However, we had a smooth sea, and soon some sunshine, and for this stretch of the Irish Sea this was definitely a good day. We took it in turns to have a few hours sleep, and the day passed quickly, and we were soon approaching the Conwy River. Our luck held, and we got a much better favourable tide for the last couple of hours than I had expected, together with a fresher wind coming from the east, which enabled us to get the main up. As a result we were averaging 7.5kts over the ground for the last couple of hours approaching the river entrance, which helped us get there before HW, which was perfect.

This enabled us to work our way over the bar and down the river on the last of the flood tide, still pushing us along. We entered Deganwy Marina exactly at local HW, just as the tide started to turn, and so had avoided all the adverse tide at the end of the trip. 77 miles in 13 hours...an average speed of 6 kts over the ground, which is good for this trip. A big thank you to Claire and John in putting up with the early start and fairly miserable first couple of hours, which made this possible.

Moondog was soon safely tied up in her home berth, roughly 3 months and 1700 miles after leaving in May.

I will write a summary and proper thanks to all those who helped later, but for now it feels good to have completed the trip; time to start planning for next year!