Deganwy to Troon

Moondog
Brian Whitefoot
Sat 18 Apr 2015 09:15

The trip starts ...to Troon ( 55:17.4N, 03:49.6w)

After weeks of preparation, and a delay for weather, this is the start of Moondog’s 2015 cruise to the Baltic, from her home over the last few years in Deganwy Marina.  Claire Senior has kindly agreed to be crew for this first leg up to Scotland, and joined the boat on Friday 17 April, to be ready for the start on the Saturday morning. The plan is to rendezvous with her husband John in a weeks time for a transit together of the Caledonian Canal.

We slipped lines at 1015, an hour before high water Deganwy, and punched the last of the flood tide into the Conwy River. This left us with the full six hour ebb tide to push us past Anglesey and on our way to Chicken Rock, at the SW end of the Isle of Man. Our plan was to decide at Chicken Rock whether to carry on to Troon in the Firth of Clyde, or stop over night in Peel .

A great sail in sunshine with a F4 and F5 breeze from the east for much of the first leg to Chicken Rock, which we reached around 1900, to witness a beautiful sunset.  We were well set for the tides up from the Isle of Man to Scotland and the weather was perfect, with winds  forecast to drop overnight. So, an easy decision to sail on through the night rather than stop for a day in Peel.

It was around this time that we discovered we had a stowaway....Bogdan. I suspect we are going to hear more of him as the trip progresses.

The night motor sail from the Isle of Man coast up along the Galloway coast to the Firth Of Clyde was uneventful , with us splitting it into three watches ( for the avoidance of doubt ,this does not mean that Bogdan had one of the watches). A crystal clear night with a sky full of stars, and I am fairly sure we saw the space station crossing the sky ; through binoculars it was certainly a very large object glinting as it moved quickly across the sky.

At around 0500 on the 19 April we were in the Firth of Clyde passing Loch Ryan, and it was clear that we had just missed a fog bank a little further up the North Channel.  It was then an easy motor sail in very light winds up to Troon, and we were tied up at 1130. Chilled for the rest of the day.

A good start to the season, with 156 nautical miles done in 25 hrs...an average speed of 6.25 kts.  We were helped by the tides, particularly since our timings meant that we missed some of the adverse tides whilst close in on the NW side of the Isle of Man. For a couple of hours in the night we had 3 kts of favourable tide pushing us along.


--
Brian Whitefoot
 
Mob (44) 07721 849213

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