2021 Round GB Day 10. Filey - Blyth.

 

A great, albeit chilly, sail. after clearing Filey Brig I was able to sail all the way to Blyth offing at good speed. The dampener on this was the possibility of getting stuck in Blyth for an extended period due to approaching weather, hopefully not for 12 days as happened last year.

Click here for Day 11, Blyth to Lindisfarne.

72.4 NM in 14.5 hours an average of 4.99 knots. Wind generally easterly at 7 - 12 knots.

Leaving Blyth Sunday or early Monday?

Yesterday (Friday) was rather wild with a northerly wind whipping up the water in the marina, fortunately I am on an inner berth, three yachts that arrived for shelter Thursday and Friday were not as lucky and are being bashed against the pontoon in gale force winds. The Dutch boat was fortunate to get in c 09:00 in 25 knots of wind a few hours before it got a lot worse.

With plenty of room between the pontoon ‘fingers’ I was able to rig the
mooring lines to hold Sancerre well off of the finger for a comfortable albeit
very noisy evening.

Saturday dawned with light winds but that quickly changed and it is again windy and will get worse with gusts of 40 knots predicted. The good news however is that the forecast of some strong winds for Thursday or Friday has been toned down so that I have some flexibility on when to leave which is good as there is some uncertainty as to when I can.

The wind should ease early Sunday morning but with waves predicted to be over 4 metres high close to my route this evening I doubt that it would be comfortable, or safe  to leave early tomorrow, especially with the remaining wind against tide during the morning, also it is likely that anchorages on route would be uncomfortable or untenable until Monday. On the other hand an earlier start would give favourable winds for longer before they turn light and then adverse.

I will be checking again this evening and again in the morning but there appear to be two options, leave about lunchtime tomorrow and sail through the night, probably to the Humber and anchor behind Spurn point or, more likely, to leave very early on Monday morning and go to Lowestoft in 2 or 3 legs stopping off at Spurn and / or Filey (or one of the anchorages a bit further north).

Hopefully I will be able to get home without too many interruptions from the weather, even though I may have to motor quite a bit (I have fuel to get to Lowestoft where I can get more, none is available here). I certainly don’t want another almost 2 week hiatus.

Blyth - Filey

Stuck in Blyth

Well, it looks like I could be here for a while.

The next safe, all weather and all tide port for a boat that can't take the ground is Lowestoft, ports in between either have locks (most of them), bridges (Whitby) or drying approaches or harbours, single handed it will take 3-4 days to get there, even under engine. 

The last weather window and the one we are in now were not quite long enough and according to the two main models neither are the next two. With winds gusting 45-50 knots forecast for Tuesday / Wednesday and again for Friday so it looks like a boring week with not much to do.

Update Tuesday:

The GFS model says I can leave Thursday ( just) but the ECMWF model says Tuesday next week ☹️ I suspect the GFS is a bit optimistic and it only needs to be a bit off to make it not viable, mainly due to lack of suitable anchorages in  a brisk north wind / high sea, Filey is ok in reasonable conditions but probably not with a big sea running as there it likely to be from today’s nastiness, I’m  not sure about Spurn but that’s 2 days away.

And low tide early evening means I would not be able get into harbours on route.

Still no showers or facilities but compared to a couple who took shelter here yesterday I am living in luxury, they are in a serious hi-tech rowing boat heading to the river Crouch, not sure if they have a tent or if they have to stay on their bunk(s), either way not much room to move. Better them than me.

Slide show all of my pictures from Blyth. Page through by clicking the arrows or click in the centre of the pic to view from Flickr in a new window or full screen:

Leaving Blyth Sunday or early Monday?

Stage 24, Lindisfarne to Blyth.

Monday at The Holy Isle was a washout with rain and fog and I stayed on board but there was some excitement in the late afternoon when, after 22 hours on the anchor it started to drag in the strong current through the anchorage. I noticed before the anchor alarms went off but quick work was needed to avoid dragging into the moorings and preferably without using the engine until the anchor was up along with the trip line which could easily get into the propeller where it would hopefully get chopped up by the rope cutter rather than wrapping round the prop, stalling the engine and leaving me without propulsion.

When the anchor came up, I was surprised to find a large car tyre on it with the point of the anchor right through the tyre wall. Fortunately, I was able to get it off fairly quickly and reset the anchor for a peaceful night.

Tuesday dawned with fog banks coming through and with the forecast models coming into agreement for the next few days predicting strong winds from the south, south east and southwest at various times. Although there would be several good days for sailing but generally with headwinds and more importantly on-shore winds which would make planned anchorages (and Lindisfarne) untenable. Gales would also come through at some time between Thursday and Saturday night.

I therefore decided to move immediately to Blyth, the best shelter available in the area to await better weather. In theory, except very close to spring tides, there is enough water over the “bar” into the anchorage for Sancerre to pass at all states of the tide provided the sea is reasonably calm but to be on the safe side I left at 10:30, an hour after low tide for an extra half metre of water and to be going into the tide minimising the speed over the ground making navigation easier.

 Some of the seals leaving Lindisfarne before me, taking the last of the ebb

to get to sea. There were dozens, probably hundreds of them altogether.

A nice 31ft "Golden Hind" class boat, arrived

after me and we later sailed in company

most of the way to Blyth they tracking me

with passive AIS in the fog whilst I tracked 

them on radar.

Shortly after clearing the island and approaches the fog became significantly thicker and visibility varied from about 100 yards to 300 until I was well past Seahouses. The F3 wind was on the nose so I motored through the Inner Sound seeing Bamburgh Castle and the Farne Islands only on radar, keeping speed down to 4 knots to give more time to analyse what was going on. 

I also saw a lot of small fishing boats on radar (but not on AIS), in a half hour period I tracked 7 different boats classified by the radar track as “dangerous”, changed course twice to avoid collision and saw only one boat at a range of 200 feet as we passed. The visibility improved to a half mile or more as I passed Newton Point and with the wind off the bow but not far enough off to make the course but I hoisted the mainsail and motor sailed at good speed – beating along the coast would have meant an arrival in the dark in a forecast blustery wind with rain.

When I turned the next corner I was able to sail but frustratingly the wind changed after about half an hour and it was back to motor sailing. The rainstorms arrived an hour out from Blyth and the wind started to increase. Given immediate clearance to enter the harbour I was alongside at 17:25, 34 miles in 7 hours.

Ironically the warmest weather I have had since leaving St Ives has been the first couple of days in Blyth, Wednesday the winds were light so I would not have got far sailing, but the weather overnight was very wet and windy. Today (Tuesday) there has been lots of warm sunshine with a strong south easterly wind (F4-6) increasing to F7 or Gale 8 later, Saturday is likely to be much the same but there appears to be a good chance of favourable winds for a few days from Sunday. We shall see.

Stuck in Blyth