Beyond the Barrage - The Sequel

As dawn broke on Sunday morning we left our berth at Cardiff Bay Yacht Club and entered Lock 2 of the barrage, squeezing in with 2 fishing boats and a survey vessel.

Previous trips 'beyond the barrage' hadn't been for longer than a couple of hours which helped me to build up my confidence and remind me what I needed to do to be a competent crew member. Setting off today felt different - it felt very real all of a sudden.  The strong winds of the past couple of days had eased off but the sea was very lumpy and confused, added to that we immediately had 6 hours ahead of us motor sailing against the tide. There wasn't much to see in the way of passing vessels or other distractions - I just focused on watching the distant horizon to try and keep the feeling of queasiness at bay. 

After about 10 hours Lundy came into view, as did a pod of very playful dolphins followed by the most amazing sunset. That's more like the sailing paradise I signed up for! 

After the sun finally set, having coloured the sky all shades of orange and pink, a bright moon rose and numerous star constellations appeared in the dark sky. While I was snoozing Dave watched a single dolphin swimming behind the boat with bright electric-blue bioluminescent plankton lighting up its body and the wake it created. He described it as Disney cartoon-like, sadly no photograph though.

The last time I did a night passage was 42 years ago when Dave and I took a yacht called Ocean Venture across the Atlantic to charter in BVI. The 2791 mile non-stop trip from Tenerife to Antigua (where we made landfall on New Years Eve) took 17 days and there were 6 of us on board. We had a very 'relaxing' 4 hours on / 8 hours off shift pattern with 2 of us always on watch. 

As Dave and I are a little short-handed on these first few long passages we have agreed an informal arrangement - whoever felt tired would rest for a couple of hours, but always be available 'on call' for support or guidance. When a heavy mist / fog rolled in at 4am I woke Dave from his slumber. The radar went on and the horizon was scanned even closer than before. As the sun rose on our port side (east) a fog bow appeared on the starboard side, and in contrast to ‘normal’ rainbows which disappear almost immediately this fog bow was visible for over 2 hours. See my next post for more information on this rare weather phenomenon. 

On Monday morning we enjoyed lots more encounters with dolphins - some very playful pods, others solitary dolphins just passing by and checking us out. Some larger ones chased the smaller ones away and we think there were at least two different species in amongst them.

We arrived at the Isles of Scilly about 32 hours after leaving Cardiff, we'd had to motor or motor-sail all the way as the wind was not favourable for the course we needed to take. Re-fueling cost us £100 and using a mooring buoy at St Mary's Harbour was £26. The islands look popular with many visitors piling onto day trip boats, even now as we are approaching the end of the main tourist season. The low cloud and mist probably didn't paint it in its best light for us. So we decided not to bother inflating the dinghy to row ashore and instead enjoyed numerous well earned cups of tea and biscuits and decided to have an early night.