54:40.35 N, 005:38.74 W

At 4:50 am the anchor alarm went off since the wind had swung round to the north. This was unexpected from the weather forecast but welcome as in our favour for the journey south. The anchor when finally hauled up about half a ton of weed that took some time to remove from the flukes. eventually it was unravelled and tossed overboard and the anchor stowed.We decided to head for Northern Ireland, Bangor to be specific and see what the next few days brings in terms of the wind. On passage with the autopilot doing the steering Fe baked bread using the detailed instructions in the river cottage handbook number 3. (see picture below). It worked amazingly well.

 

The weather has definitely turned colder. The tide assisted the passage south down the sound of Jura until it turned against us as we neared the Mull of Kintyre, slowing progress to around 1.5 knots for an hour or two (with a boat speed of 6.5 this was a quite impressive 5 knot adverse tide). As it was sunny and pleasant this was not a hardship except for the slight frisson of trying to avoid being set into the end of the North channel TSS. There were no ships around however and once down the north east coast of Northern Ireland the tide swung once again in our favour and we achieved the magical 8 knots once more.

 

Moonrise/sunset ocurred while passing the offshore rocks and light house of ‘the Maidens’. We decided to anchor in Ballyholme bay for the night, next to the marina at Bangor with a view to possibly moving south to Carlingford Loch tomorrow. Arriving in the dark we used radar to creep into the wide but calm bay and the lovely full moon helped. However the next weather forecast stopped us rather in our tracks being a broadcast from the coastguard about a force 8 gale from the south expected in the Irish sea soon. As we’d heard previously that the Irish sea was the only shipping area without a gale warning this was disappointing but hardly surprising. Tomorrow’s weather forecast will determine plans for the next day or two.

 

The Bread

 

The Maidens