Camira Cruise 2014

Well. I suppose I better get this thing started before I forget where we have been. It’s now 20th May 2014 and we have started our Big Trip. In fact it started on 4 April when we moved out of the house and onto Camira indefinitely. The house is let out on an initial contract of eighteen months with a view to it being extended assuming all things are going well and we are enjoying our new lifestyle. Time will tell. The move out of the house went well, Gordon and I managed to do it ourselves, however, it was heavy work and when we move back in, I will be getting “a man in” to do the move. It took two trips of loading the van and then unloading the van and then loading it all into storage containers. I know a great storage company called Absolute Self Storage if you ever have the need. For some reason I didn’t think we had a lot of stuff…..Mmmm! I suppose after twenty three years of marriage you do accumulate a lot of things(Gordon’s note- aye one thing too many!), albeit, we had been clearing out for months before hand, selling things on Gumtree, car boot sales, charity shops, you name it, we did it. We moved onto the boat in Ardrossan Clyde Marina

thinking all we had to do, after having most of the work done during the winter, was a couple of more jobs and some test sails and then get on our way. Our first job however was to try and find space on the boat for all our stuff. Oh my goodness! When we got everything on the boat, there was barely room for us to move let alone move things into their proper place, but we got there in the end. As for the jobs still to be done, cockpit shower, expansion vessel for the water system, new spray hood, dodgers, stack pack and new sail to be fitted, these were all small jobs, well in time, perhaps not in money, but like any job on the boat it takes much longer than you think. To top it all, the insurance companies started adding to our list saying they wanted new guard rails to be put on, £200, a gas check done, £120 and the shore power checked, we drew the line at that one and said no which they seemed to accept. After meeting up with friends

and a sad goodbye to my big sis and Harry we finally set off on April. We were heading to
Campbeltown for our shakedown sail where we spent a couple of days due to some hefty winds. We made our way to Glenarm in N Ireland across the North Channel

During the passage we noticed Camira has developed a prop whistle at certain revs, which Gordon believes is as result of the underwater profile changes of removing the old log and fitting new raw water intake. He also says he is trying to get it to whistle either the Sash or the Minstrel Boy depending on our ultimate arrival port. We were picking up our friend Kevin who planned on coming with us across the English Channel as he has done it many times and his experience would have been invaluable to us on our 1^st attempt. We met up with Kevin on Tuesday 29^th April, and after saying bye to Arline and Big Alex, who had come to say cheerio we set off for Ardglass. We arranged a spare Camira polo shirt for him as befitting the crew……………
as you can see he is delighted with it LOL

 
We stayed two nights in Ardglass, again because of high winds. This was our 1^st meeting with Fleur of Pendle (the bigger boat next to ours)

We left Ardglass on the Thursday afternoon and got to Bangor late on with an early start planned for the next day no shore time. Next stop Howth, near Dublin, our first foot outside the UK and our first
 courtesy flag was hoisted.

 

 On Saturday Kevin left the boat and Arline came down to pick him up and supplied us with a nice bottle of wine, a godsend as we had ran out of euros and the only Howth ATM was out of action. There were a few days of really windy weather forecast and Kevin had other commitments so was unable to stay any longer and see us across the English Channel. It’s now Monday 5 May and we are still in Howth, the wrong side of the Irish Sea, the forecast is awful and we have no idea when we will get going again. Our next leg should be down to Arklow and then back across the St Georges channel which is going to be about a 15 hour trip to Milford Haven before heading down towards Lands End, another long trip and then across the English channel to France. On the 18^th May. We eventually left Howth after 8 days of really strong winds and gales. Howth is a lovely wee place but eight days is a long time when it’s not by choice. However, we passed the time well, Frank Kelly in the sailing club bar kept us belly laughing and even supplied is with food left over from a wake , a trip to Dublin, lots of nice walks, especially the costal walks and our first wee bit of entertaining on the boat. A lovely couple, Mick and Anne-Marie, from Pendle who have been sailing the same route as us since Bangor. Their boat is called Fleur and it so happens that they are planning to go to Portugal which is where we also want to be by the end of the summer, all going well.
 

Our next stop was Arklow, this is where Ballykissangel was filmed. We sailed down past the Arklow banks where they now have windmills………….at least we shouldn’t hit them

We didn’t get to see any of Arklow as we had a broken stanchion which had to be repaired with the invaluable help of Mick. He is like a dog with a bone, he won’t leave it till the jobs complete, which was great for us because by the end of the day we had managed to get the engineering company at the marina to drill out screws in the stanchion and Gordon and Mick refitted it to the boat making it safe for us to carry on. The marina in Arklow is pretty awful, it is so small manoeuvring in it is very tight and when the tide comes in so much rubbish is washed into the marina. YUK! The river itself is nice though

  

Oh well, it has to be done, our first overnight sail and it’s across the Irish Sea to Milford Haven. We left Arklow about lunch time, it was a nice sunny day and the forecast was good. Not a great deal of wind so it was a motor sail. The first half of the sixteen hour journey was fine but as we got about half way across, because it has been very windy for the last week or so here, it was a very corkscrewing sail for the second half. There was also the excitement (or was it apprehension), of night time approaching. Anyway, I can only say the second half of the journey was not nice, we didn’t manage to get a break routine going so we were absolutely shattered. I couldn’t go down below because of the type of sea for fear of being sick, so poor Gordon had to do all the navigation, in between heating up hot water bottles for me to keep me warm when I helmed. Then there is the approach to Milford Haven…. We thought it might have been a bit lighter by the time we got there but in fact it was still pretty much black out there. For anyone who hasn’t been there, the estuary running up to the marina has oil and gas refineries, lights everywhere, there are two channels into the estuary but on the approach you can see the lights for both channels making it initially, very confusing. To add to this there are huge and I mean huge oil tankers, ferries and boats all over the place also displaying navigation light from which you have to establish which direction they are going in. Oh, and I forgot to mention, tides that would pick a wee yacht up and spit it out at the drop of a hat. All in a day’s sailing to the crew of Camira and Fleur! We got in about 5am and went straight to bed for a very well earned rest.

 

Once in the Marina it was a very nice place, the people were lovely and we had some lovely weather while we were there. We paid a visit to the large Tesco to stock up on things as this might be the last time we can get things like good tea bags and my hair dye before getting to France. (Gordon’s note –
not my hair dye)

 

We left Milford Haven the following evening, another night time sail taking us about nineteen hours due to the timing of when you are allowed to leave the Lock at Milford Haven marina and having to arrive two hours before or after high water at Padstow, our next stopping place.

 

We had a very pleasant sail across the Bristol Channel to Padstow, no wind, so another motoring job, but hey, that’s fine, we will get plenty sailing later on and on these types of crossings, you would prefer no wind to anything too lively. We did however have the company of porpoises & dolphins from about 3am for most of the day. They are so beautiful to watch, but also so quick it’s almost impossible to get a good picture of them jumping out of the water playing in the wake of the boat. Sorry, I tried for hours to get one of them jumping but to no avail.

This was an altogether more pleasant sail, we managed to get a three on, three off shift going so it made it a whole lot easier, it also helped that it was flat calm, a full moon at night and sunshine by day, other than a wee bit of fog where I had to wake Gordon to come up on deck to help keep a look
out.

 

Like Milford Haven, Padstow harbour can only be entered at certain times. Outside the harbour gate it dries out and you must follow the stated channel into the harbour. Again, it’s very tidal so you need to be very careful not to stray too far otherwise you could end up going aground. You don’t really appreciate how much it dries out until you see it at low tide. Hard to believe this is the same area.

Our friends Dave and Iain came to visit yesterday, they stayed over last night so needless to say we had a bit of a night!!!. It was so good to see them and as usual we had such a laugh and a great time.

 

Feeling pretty tired after the merriment of last night so I think it will be an early night tonight then make a decision about when we’re heading off probably to Newlyn which is round the corner from Lands End

 

Currently listening to a brilliant “Sinatra” singer on the quayside 10ft from our boat