Bangor, Belfast and Basil

We had a cracking sail from Peel to Belfast Lough and were very pleased that we made the decision to call Carrickfergus Marina on the mobile, rather than waiting to use the VHF just as we were arriving at its entrance. It transpired that a major dredging project, due to be completed at the beginning of April, had over-run badly and the marina is closed until the end of May. We diverted to Bangor, on the south side of Belfast Lough, and were very happy that the decision was made for us. Bangor town has a sadly run-down feel to it but we were given a brilliant welcome from members of the very smart Royal Ulster Yacht Club and a 20-minute train ride took us to the Titanic Quarter, formerly part of the huge Harland & Wolff dockyard and now home to the amazing Titanic Belfast Centre.

The Titanic Centre is a wonderful building, opened ten years ago

The place takes you through the history of shipbuilding in Belfast and then shows just how the Titanic was built - including an excellent 'dockyard tour' in a six-seat monorail car - moving on to stories of the sinking (including chilling recorded testimonies of survivors) before finishing with awesome footage of the wreck on the seabed, shown on a huge screen. We spent nearly three hours in the building before visiting the Nomadic, a 1000-passenger tender, also built at this yard, that was used to transport 290 or so passengers joining the Titanic from Cherbourg on her fateful maiden voyage.

The slipway where Titanic was built and launched

A model showing the new building next to the slipway. 

The launch - we were surprised at how much of the superstructure was yet to be built

Workers dwarfed by the three propellers

The Harland & Wolff yard built hundreds of ships and, at its peak in the Second World War, employed 35,000 people. Today, it's all but gone; the last ship was launched in 2003 and now just over 100 people are employed to carry out ship maintenance projects and some oil rig and wind farm work. The two huge cranes, Samson and Goliath, still dominate the site but sit as immobile memorials to the incredible work that once went on here.

Today we've moved on again, with a gentle motor and sail north up the Antrim coast, assisted by a two-knot tide.

The P&O ferry from Loch Ryan (Stranraer) to Larne. We slowed down to give it plenty of room - with the recent publicity of crew sackings, we didn't want to test their seamanship!

Our first chance to fly the Parasailor this year

Glenarm is a small, council-run marina that we visited many years ago in our previous boat, Gentoo. A new, third pontoon has now been added to increase its capacity.

The little town doesn't have a lot going on, it must be said, so we'll probably have another short, light airs passage up to Rathlin Island at the very top of Northern Ireland tomorrow. Short, light airs passages really suit our third crew member, Basil, who is really enjoying the voyage so far and adds a certain something to mealtimes:

From one castle to another

We are very happy to have completed a significant passage of 280nm up the Irish Sea - it took us 43 hours, so involved two night watches where neither of us got a huge amount of sleep! However, we had lots of wind for fast sailing, though this kicked up some big waves (hence the lack of sleep). We decided to shorten our original plan a little and put into Peel on the west coast of the Isle of Man and we're glad we did, as it's been a fun place to stop. Watching the weather forecast, we're staying a second night here which has given us the chance to recover and also to fix a couple of minor boat issues.

There will be a video to share, once we've edited it and found some Wi-Fi to upload it but, in the meantime, here are a few photos:

Approaching Longships lighthouse off Land's End

Passing close to Longships (on advisable in settled conditions) with Land's End in the background

Rolling our way northwards up the Irish Sea with Constance the autopilot working hard

Peel Castle and the entrance to the inner harbour

The inner harbour used to dry out at low tide but the flap-gate now retains water for the marina. It opens for about 3 hours at high tide and the pedestrian bridge opens on demand for boats to enter or leave

The harbour is shared by the busy fishing fleet and resident and visiting yachts in the marina

Tomorrow we have a 50nm crossing to Carrickfergus which lies on the north side of Belfast Lough. We should be able to time it to benefit from 6 hours of favourable tide - the advantage of using Peel as a pit-stop - and the passage should take us less than 8 hours. Carrickfergus will be the last place with big supermarkets for the next couple of months; once into the Outer Hebrides, small Co-ops will be the best we'll get so we'll take the opportunity to stock up on essentials. 

A dramatic anchorage - and the wind is to return!

 As backdrops to anchorages go, it doesn't get much better than this!

We spent a peaceful night beside St Michael's Mount near Penzance and awoke to gorgeous sunshine.

There's a strict 'no drones' exclusion zone over the island, castle and beach so we had to fly to the west of our anchorage to get these shots 

The island has been owned by the same family, St Aubyn, since the mid 1600's and was once a major trading port (though the little harbour dries at low water). In the English Civil War it was a Royalist stronghold for four years, allowing arms and supplies to be brought in from France. The St Aubyn family still lives in part of the castle but it was given over to the National Trust in 1954 so it's now a major tourist destination. At low water you can walk across to the island on a causeway and boats then ferry visitors across when the tide returns.

At last we have a forecast for some wind! We'll leave early this afternoon as a gentle breeze builds to take us round Land's End, with some useful tidal assistance.

Sunday evening forecast

As we head up the Irish Sea we'll have a period of fairly brisk winds behind us on Monday but they should calm down by the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Monday afternoon forecast

Our plan is to get up to the coast of Northern Ireland by Tuesday evening, though there are some tricky tidal gates to deal with at the North Channel (between Northern Ireland and SW Scotland). We'll report back in a couple of days!

Playing with the big boys in Falmouth

 We're in Falmouth, after a surprisingly good sail (given the low-wind forecast) from Fowey and have spent a night in the rather posh Port Pendennis Marina. Surprisingly, it's actually cheaper than the council-run yacht haven just nearby and has the advantage of some glamourous yachts to look at. The biggest here is the beautiful 179ft ketch, Adele.

Even before the current media coverage of Russian ownership of many (not this one), we've always been pretty appalled by the 'look at me, I have money to burn' nature of super-yachts but this one is just beautiful. Built in 2005, Adele has cruised the world with her first owner and was refitted in 2018; she looks moderately comfortable down below, judging by these photos on the internet:

Adele is not the only interesting boat here - one of the older Volvo Ocean Race boats, Telefonica, is here. She looks a bit tatty but is obviously having work done on her:

We watched the cruise ship (in the background of this photo) reverse neatly out of its berth:

This morning, after a run to the shops for food provisions and the use of the marina washing machines, we'll head up the Fal to find a quieter spot to stay. The forecast remains a bit variable in terms of wind but we think we'll be heading for Scilly on Saturday or Sunday. By Monday it looks as though we'll have some south-westerly breezes to take us northwards. Fingers crossed.

The first sailing video of the season

 

The first passage yesterday wasn't exactly taxing so we took the opportunity to film a short video - you can find it here: https://youtu.be/LDXmrubHW1g

Day 2 was a no-wind affair so we had a very easy 3-hour motor to Fowey. We're surprised how empty the place it - this time last year it was heaving with holidaymakers but we guess many of them have now re-rediscovered the delights (?) of air travel.

All's well aboard.

Another adventure begins

 After a frenetic couple of weeks of sorting, packing and transporting, we have moved back aboard Maunie for another big trip. The house, garden and, most importantly, Bertie the cat, are in the care of our friends Paul and Tracey who have taken up residence, along with Huxley the Labrador, and we're re-adjusting to life aboard Maunie.

The plan for the next three months is to re-trace some of our track of last summer - up to the west coast of Scotland and the Outer Hebrides. However, this year we want to spend a reasonable chunk of time in the Hebrides before (weather and time permitting) sailing to Orkney and then round the NE corner of Scotland, down to Inverness and through the Caledonian Canal (which links into Loch Ness) to Fort William before returning home.

'Weather permitting' is, of course, an important proviso in such plans and it hasn't started terribly well, to be honest. This week's forecast is for very gentle winds - this is tomorrow's chart:

However, we have learned to be optimistic and to search for little weather windows and our first sail today, 32nm from the Dart to the River Yealm, was a good example. We fully expected to have to motor the whole passage but managed a really lovely hour with the spinnaker flying.

In the River Yealm on a drizzly evening

The whole visitors' pontoon to ourselves

So, we'll take each day as it comes and hope that normal south-westerlies will return early next week to send us north up the Irish Sea. We'll update this blog as and when we can.

Afloat and planning new adventures

We are very pleased to report that Maunie is safely back in the water! The insurance survey, carried out the week before launching, went really well and we were impressed with our surveyor, Nick Vass, who was hugely knowledgeable and helpful. Needless to say, he really liked Maunie! We haven't received his report yet but he gave us a good verbal review - a couple of minor issues but otherwise the boat got a big thumbs up.

The last winter job before relaunch was to plug a rather large hole in the bottom of the hull. We'd removed the seacocks, which allow cooling water to be pumped to the engine and generator, since it was 10 years since we'd replaced the originals with good quality bronze fittings. The seacocks are actually a trio of fittings - a skin fitting which bolts through the fibreglass hull, a ball valve which screws into the skin fitting and can be shut in the unlikely event of a water hose failing, and a strainer which filters out any weed or other debris to prevent it being sucked into the cooling water pumps.

We'd realised at the end of last season that the ball valve for the engine had failed - the handle turned but too easily - clearly the valve was stuck, luckily in the half-open position so we could still use the engine. This was obviously a major safety concern, so removing and replacing the skin fittings and valves was a must-do job on our winter list. 

Three seacocks with water-strainers. Left to right, they supply the generator, engine and water-maker with salt water. The valve handles are in the closed position here.

The engine strainer, ball valve and skin fitting. The easiest way to remove it was to cut the outside of the skin fitting off and push it upwards through the hull.

The broken ball-valve. Still partly open even though the handle is in the closed position - not good!

The generator strainer is polished up and the new valve and skin fitting test-fitted, ready to go back into the boat.

Everything refitted and ready for launch. 

It's very important to bed the skin fittings with plenty of sealant!

Of course, we filmed a short video of the process for those who just love a technical video! https://youtu.be/nNf30nQZj_c

Launch day, last Tuesday, all went very smoothly though it was an early start to catch the tide.

Last chance for underwater checks before we launch

Ready for the hour's motor down river to the mooring

Maunie is pretty much ready to go now, with all the sails fitted. We'll aim to get down to her early next week for a test sail and to add various bits of kit that are still at home. Amongst the items to go back aboard is our Icom long-range SSB radio that was such a wonderful thing as we crossed the Pacific. Our record distance for boat-to-boat voice communications was nearly 5,000 miles when we were in New Zealand and our friends Ana & Colin were approaching the coast of Chile. 

We don't use the SSB much in UK waters - the normal VHF radio (with a range of perhaps 20 miles) plus mobile phones are easier to use - but we felt it was time to give the machine a bit of tlc. The metal case had become a bit rust-spotted in places (it sits near the main companionway) so we took it off, removed all the paint, cleaned the metal to remove any traces of rust and gave it six coats of spray paint. 

A satisfyingly chunky bit of kit. The radio is about 25 years old so has lots of knobs and buttons to play with - it now looks as good as new.

So the plan? We're aiming to be back aboard at the beginning of May for another Scottish adventure. Stay tuned for more news, as they say in radio circles.