Moored at Falmouth this season we will be in prime position to explore the Scilly Isles. The voice of doom(the pilot book) recommends that we should excellent ground tackle as the tides sluice through the anchorages and passages between the isles.

A couple of commentators have remarked on the lack of pictures recently. Due to a technical fault, a bust USB cable I wasn’t able to load pictures on the PC and thence the blog. That’s now sorted, I got another cable and threw the soldering iron overboard! Here are some shots of the journey and some reflections of what I learnt on the way.

Dingle, Tralee and County Kerry

Xiphias straining her moorings

I spent a week at Dingle waiting for the weather to clear. Either the wind was Force 6 or the

A source of great literature.

visibility was 100ft. I have never known a place to have continuous rain for a week, other than growing up in Swansea. I tried to make the most of the time there and managed a couple of tourist tours. My mother was born in Dingle so it was strange to wander around the town she would have known as a girl.

Visiting my aunt was interesting, I heard the same stories my mother told when I was young, told now with a different voice. The different perspective was enlightening, a family struggling with personal tragedy in the background of a newly independent Ireland struggling to assert its identity.

Tralee and Fenit

Yacht racing, no matter the weather

I’ve commented before how the Irish sailing clubs are very active. Here the Tralee yacht club are sailing out into the bay, regardless. It was another day that I thought better of sailing, waiting for the forecasters to relent on the occasional Force 6. These folk were determined to enjoy their sailing. The club also runs a sailing school for youngsters to start with dinghies. Good for them! I was joined at Tralee by my friend Bill, like me, he learnt in the school of strong blows, if the forecast is Force or more either leave harbour or have a nice day. The photo shows the boats sailing in the protected bay. The Atlantic swell was running at 5m!

Escape to the Aran Islands

When we got away Bill had to rediscover his sea legs. I had already been in the swells and was accustomed to the

Hundreds of feet high the cliffs rebutt the sea

long rollers with a the short chop on top. We ran, sailing with the wind behind us across the yawning gap of the Shannon, skipping the mighty Clare coast. I would have liked to have visited the ports on the Shannon river but they are miles upstream and would have added a week to the schedule, assuming the weather would let me out again. The mighty coast of Clare with its huge limestone cliffs would have been great, if the visibility was more than 5 miles. As the Irish cruising club sailing directions put it. The magnificent cliffs are best admired from a distance by sailing yachts.

Tha Aran islands are an astonishing place, tilted so the hard rock faces the Atlantic with the lower and fertile ground facing the Irish mainland. A honey pot of tourism the islanders have made the most of their resources, providing summer schools in Gaelic, pony and traps for the idle and infirm trippers and cycles for those who want their independent transport. The fields are tiny surrounded with stone walls but no gates. When the farmer wishes to move stock in or out he simply pulls down some stones and builds them up again when the animals are moved.

The long trudge north

Portrush,NI. The fist time alongside since leaving Tralee

I can’t say a lot about Clare island, Blacksod bay, Broadhaven or Teelin. The weather was so dank that I hardly saw any of them. The cloud rarely raised above 100ft and the visibility was rarely greater than  2miles. I then visited Loch Swilly which has become a holiday home refuge,  not a cove or bay being not overlooked by the ubiquitous bungalows.

Portrush, my only stop in Northern Ireland, is a typical seaside town struggling to make its way. I took the opportunity to visit Derry/LondonDerry which is doing its utmost to become a modern vibrant European university city. Alas, the day I visited a bomb had been placed outside the city police station.

Would I do it again?

No! Like walking up a Volcano, one only has to do it once. I would go to the Southwest of Ireland again, but the Atlantic coast is attractive only to the most intrepid, who seemed to be French sailing Ovni designed aluminium boats. I wonder if that coast is more attractive when the sun shines, the winds are gentle and swell less than 2m?

Helford river

The Helford, made famous by Daphne du Maurier in Frenchman’s Creek, is the quintessential west country river harbour. I was last here 20 years ago having completed my first passage as skipper of my boat Giminy Kricket of which I had half share. (Westerly GK24, 24 feet long and 4’6″ headroom). I completed the same passage yesterday from Falmouth with much the same result – no problem. Time has crowded the river with mooring buoys, the upper reaches are closed for oyster beds and the anchorage at Durgen beach closed for eel grass protection. I know anchors and cables disturb the bottom but surely the sea horses wouldn’t object to some visitor’s moorings as a one off disruption. The village properties have changed for the better and are in good repair. How many are second homes or holiday lets I wonder but the active sailing club, busy pub, thriving village store and internet cafe indicate there is plenty of local life.

I knew I had to leave Falmouth having completed laundry and sundry other jobs I was accosted by some teenage girls

Eating on board - luxuary

with the words, “Oy dew ‘have andy Rizla?” My negative response drew a startled query, “Don’cha smoke?” Maybe I’m not ready to rejoin town life, just yet. That incident aside most people I pass will say hello and pass the time of day which for a lone yachtsman is always welcome. My stay in Falmouth was also filled with trepidation and fears as I read the admonitions of the pilots and sailing guides but now in sunny Helford I am more positive and ready for the next three big challenges.

• Penzance to Padstow, round Lands End, 65nM, 16 hours
• Padstow to Milford Haven, across the yawning Bristol Channel, 63nM, 16 hours
• Milfrod Haven to Waterford, across the Irish Sea, 98nM, 22 hours

I know I have tarried on my way down west with the excuse that I wanted to explore a little more of the West Country than can be achieved on a normal 3 week summer holiday.

A clear view of Fowey entrance

Yesterday was a clear day of light winds and pleasant warmth, I took  a photo of the entrance of Fowey (pronounced Foy) . Today the cloud has not lifted and I am stuck in a cold damp creek next to the China clay quay with trains unloading wagons onto waiting ships. I had planned to stay here a couple of days and enjoy the Cornish hospitality. The other night I didn’t cook aboard for the first time on the voyage and eat fish’n'chips, that great seaside staple. If the weather clears tomorrow I will make my way to Falmouth and the chance to take a marina berth with the advantages of showers, laundrette and shore power. Failing that, I will doing the tracking down the tourist activities ashore, museums and cream teas.

I am beginning to settle into a pattern of sailing and res days. The sailing hasn’t been

Next day is not good sailing weather

demanding but then I have chosen my days carefully. It is still demanding though more mentally than physically and I have a horror of making a navigational error and landing the boat on the rocks. To help me along I plot waypoints into the chart plotter and sail from one to another. That all works well, but entering harbour I have to use local pilotage books to guide me through the twists and turns of the entrance, most are straight forward but I must take greater care to have all the relevant information to hand, like the radio channel the harbour master is using. Berthing is a busy time and nipping down to check out some detail is not an option.

You know I love the gadgets and this one is a real cracker. The NavTex system is old, reliable and is great source of weather and navigational information. It works like a pager as stations around Europe take turns to make a broadcast in a 10 minute window the receiver logs them to be read when convenient. I read an article in this month’s Practical Boat Owner (PBO) and was convinced this source of information was a must have option for the cruise. I didn’t want the hassle of installing yet another device with power and antenna requirements and selected the rather natty WeatherInfoBox WIB2D from those clever Germans at MÖRER SCHIFFSELEKTRONIK.

I selected the WIB2D model for three reasons

The hand-held portable receiver, ideal for small boats

• Internal antenna, no drilling or fitting another ariel.
• Internal batteries that last three days, recharge off boat batteries or laptop.
• Receives both International and National reports.

I ordered the device from Marine Electronic Services Ltd and it arrived within two days. Best of all when I plugged it in to charge up the batteries it almost immediately picked up broadcasts from Germany. A fab bit of kit that will help with those decisions whether take the sail covers off or stay in harbor and explore the delights ashore.

• The first is non-critical, the shore based battery charger is not working. This is niggle since the alternator, which I upgraded over the winter, is working just fine so I can charge the batteries by running the engine.
• The furling gear is stiff difficult to work and rotates the headsail the wrong direction so that the UV protective stripe which should be a solid blue colour is more  like a barbers pole. Fixing the rotation problem is annoying but not serious but the stiffness of the furling line is more worrisome. Why is the gear so hard to work; does it need running in?

I’m glad I have had a chance to think about the issues before departure but I only have a couple of days to sort them out.  Maybe, running repairs is the solution. If the weather window is right then getting out of the Solent and heading west is the best thing. There are plenty of good yachty harbours on the way west and can get parts and garner support on the way.

Royal Southern YC, Hamble

After lying on her mooring at the Royal Southern Yacht Club all winter, I motored the

Xiphias in slings getting a good scrub

boat up to the river Hamble to Deacons boatyard where the friendly chaps hauled her out of the water and gave a good blast to clean off the accumulated filth. She will be choked up, giving me the chance to repaint the anti-foul onto her underwater parts. It will also be the chance to service the engine and saildrive. Whilst she’s out I will also have a heating system put in.

A sparrow hawk with kill

As I walked from the boat yard to the railway station, a five minute walk, I chanced upon a Sparrow Hawk with a pigeon she had just killed. Too big a load to fly away with her prize, the bird of prey held onto her meal even though I was standing just a few metres from her. At first I thought the bird had an injury. In fact it had lunch which it was merrily plucking by the side of the pavement. Gruesome, nature red in beak and talon!

The new chart plotter

In my last article I discussed the use of chats and the importance of the traditional navigational aides. Now I am reporting the additional electronics that I have installed. The biggest item both physically and pecuniary is the electronic chart plotter. It has an inbuilt GPS receiver so is able to display the position of the boat onto the electronic chart. I have also integrated it with an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver. It puts the position speed, direction and other information about large vessels onto the screen too. In the Solent it makes little sense because it’s too busy and the distances so short that staring down electronics would be dangerous. Passage making it will have a great deal more practical use.

I made two other big investments.

Sea-Me active radar reflector – an ACTIVE system which receives a radar signal, amplifies it and re-transmits it. I bought this having read the Marine Accident Investigation into the loss of the Ouso and her crew. The MAI produced a  study of radar reflectors.

New Radio

New Digital Selective Calling (DSC) VHF set – I decided to upgrade the VHF set with latest safety features and also my existing set didn’t have UK channels M1 and M2 which as a nuisance. I also splashed out on a remote handset for the VHF radio in the cockpit. So I could use the radio without going downstairs.

Knowing where you are going is more important than knowing where you are, although the two are obviously related! When sailing, the marking off  fixes on the chart heading towards a harbour, is very satisfying.  A sailor always says heading towards a destination not to a destination, lest the fates become offended by the presumption that the sailor will actually arrive! These days the route is layed out and the progress tracked on electronic chart plotters, but there is one huge disadvantage. If the wiggly amps run away the electronics are reduced to ballast.

I am, perhaps, part of the last generation of yachtsmen that regularly set off across the English Channel to France, leaving sight of land, with nothing more than a compass, tide table and chart. True, we used a Radio Direction Finder (RDF) to pick up bearings of light houses that emitted a morse code signal on long wave frequencies. The RDF looked like a SiFi ray gun with a compass on top. When the antenna in the device lined up with the source, the signal went silent and the bearing read off the compass. The bearing was then plotted on the paper chart, not so simple on a small boat rolling in a  sea way. There was something thrilling when approaching a coast, identifying and relating  the features seen on land to those on the chart. Crossing Lyme bay, I once discovered a new and hitherto uncharted island. It was Tor Head shrouded by mist that obscured the mainland behind!

My most recent experience of racing and cruising The Solent has all been done on local pilotage knowledge. That’s to say I didn’t bother looking at the charts because I knew where I was. I would look at tide heights and direction to make sure I didn’t make too many embarrassing mistakes. We’ll ignore the occasion I hit Bramble Bank under spinnaker.

A quick match between tides

The Bramble bank is the venue for the annual cricket match between the Royal Southern Yacht Club based in Hampshire and the Island Sailing Club based at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Only when the ground is revealed for half an hour does each club take turns to win so that the members can retire to the winning club for post match analysis.

Admiralty or Imray Charts

The adventure around the UK and Ireland will require more navigational effort than I am accustomed to providing. I am convinced of the merits of maintaining the paper based plot and the advantages of an electronic chart plotter so I have invested hundreds of tax paid, hard-earned pounds into a set of Imray Charts and a RayMarine A70 chartplotter.

Why Imray not Admiralty?

The admiralty charts are the best, we can all agree on that, can’t we? They have:-

• The best detail
• Scale and accuracy
• Been used for generations
• Cover the most sailing areas
• Cost more.

Imray charts are:-

• Designed for leisure sailors
• Water resistent paper, okay to use on deck
• Have harbour details and need fewer of them
• Cover the area I am sailing at a third of the cost

Nathan kindly leant me a book he was reading, Ice Bird by David Lewis in which Lewis recounts his adventure of sailing single handed from Sydney, Australia around Antarctica. The book begins with a quote.

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was all vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.

T.E.Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Sir Robin Knox Johnson

Sir Robin was the first person to circumnavigate the globe single-handed non-stop in 1968-69 and continues to undertake many adventures.

Nathan Whitworth

Web programmer and master of his own destiny.