051:42.638 N
005:09.237 W

Dale Bay anchorage III

We had a walk around Milford Haven last night, aside from the beautifully maintained War Memorials, the rest of the town felt run down and forgotten. It has gone from boom to bust over the centuries; the museum was upbeat about the how much the busy port brings to the local economy, but that feels a parallel universe to the boarded-up shop fronts in the high street.

Sadly the Marina houses many abandoned deteriorating yachts too. Since the marina fees increased by 20% recently, a rash of ‘For Sale’ signs has appeared adding to a feeling of abandonment.  So we filled up with diesel and left through the morning lock, keen to get back to the natural corner of Dale Bay.

The Marina folks were however absolutely delightful and we saw a curious side to their humour; the lock keeper called us on the VHF to invite us to exit the lock, we acknowledged saying we would follow the yacht with the red stripe.  When we were passing through the lock he had his hands on his hips talking rather severely to the yacht with the red stripe. He turned to us and said ‘Here endeth the lesson’. Didn’t actually have a clue what he was talking about but it transpired the yacht ahead hadn’t radioed requesting permission to exit, apparently an absolute no-no. So the lock keeper called down to us “Well that’s today’s bollocking over with - thank you for letting me know he was coming through ahead of you. Have a nice day Thursday’s Child” !

It was a lovely surprise to find 15 knots blowing us down Milford Haven towards Dale Bay, so we rolled out the jib and found ourselves amongst Sunday morning yacht racing. With the Irish Ferry ploughing up through the main channel, it reminded us of everyone dodging Wightlink on Wednesday evening racing.

Took the dinghy ashore for a beautiful walk through The Gann Estuary, a tidal estuary and nature reserve where we were thrilled to count 18 Curlews in one flock. There were many other wading birds as well in this little gem, a world away from the LNG works, wind turbines, ferries, tankers and busy shipping 4 miles away.