2022 St Kilda Day 4 & 5 to St Mawes.

The Portland inshore route, normally I would
be a little closer in heading towards the Bill but
I was sailing off a Lee shore so stayed a bit further
out which on a neap tide still gave me a smooth
ride over the Ledge which can be a bit rough.

Day 4

I left Portland at 05:45, half an hour late as the alarm did not go off, perhaps fooled by the change to BST, I motored past the eastern entrance as there was a merchant ship heading for it and I wanted to be well clear, I was then able to sail in 12 - 20 knots of wind and rather more for about an hour, all the way to Plymouth, although there was rather less as I rounded the Bill. 

Sailing down the Bill somewhat reduces the risk from lobster pots but you need the wind to be from the NE through to SE to make this practical as winds from the west are disturbed or blocked by Portland.

It was close to a dead run from the Bill with the wind about 10 degrees on the starboard quarter and then from about 11:00 with it from 10 - 20 degrees off to port. The sea was unfortunately well off the port quarter so the boat was rolling a lot with the occasional broach, especially in the middle of Lyme Bay when the sea was moderately high for several hours as the tide turned to be against the wind.

Making 5 and often more than 6 knots it was a quick passage, I could have gone a bit quicker but frequently reefed the headsail to better control the boat in the steep, breaking sea.

The timing was quite good as the foul flooding tide eased as I passed Start Point which saved me some of the grief you often get from rough seas off of Salcombe and I had a fair tide past bolt tail to Plymouth.

Entering Plymouth harbour was rather entertaining, naturally the wind freshened and I was reaching quickly whilst trying to sort out the lights complicated by a large RFA and HMS Somerset at anchor changing the pattern of background lights and a warship departing without AIS getting between me and a couple of key marks.

I anchored in Jennycliff Bay just after 22:00  in 20 knots of wind which disappeared a few minutes later and I had a quite night.

72 NM over the ground in 17 hours.

Day 5

I left at 07:40 with a favourable tide but the brisk northerly died as I was weighing anchor and was light and variable until I got just past Rame Head under engine, then it was again a run under headsail only all the way to St Mawes.

After the quite night the sea was smooth as I left and with winds generally at the upper end of Force 4 or a light Force 5 the sea never got to the heights I had the previous day but it was still tiring. Video of the SeaFeather working on a broad reach with a quartering sea, best viewed full screen

Entering the St Mawes anchorage and only 1 boat at anchor,
one on a visitors buoy and a few local boats up the river, come
Easter it will start to get busy with visitors and from 1st May
when many of the local boats launch it will likely be heaving.

A fairly quick trip, 39 mile in less than 9 hours at an average speed of 4.7 knots over the ground.

Click here for the trip round the Lizard to Newlyn.

2022 St Kilda Day 3. Crows and wind instruments don’t mix.

Today I learned not to write that it’s been a smooth 2 days before the day has ended.

Just after finishing I heard some loud squawking from the top of the mast. The crow flew off but not before doing some damage. Fortunately I checked and found the wind instruments were not working although the sensor is turning and pointing. Presumably it disturbed the connection or damaged the cable.

I am now in the marina waiting for a rigger to help fix it, apart from my arthritis and general decrepitude it’s really a 2 man job, one fiddling and one checking to see if it’s working. Hopefully it can be fixed otherwise I could be here for a while.

Fixed this morning (Saturday), off again tomorrow. The forecast is reasonable although it could be a bit blower at times, and F6 further west and east so I’ll need to keep an eye on the forecast. 

There is some seriously nasty weather coming in on Thursday with some models showing northerly gust of 50 knots so I’ll have to make sure I am somewhere very safe by then, Newlyn would be favourite and possible if the weather behaves itself, with Fowey or the Fal as back ups.

Click here for the trip to St Mawes

2022 St Kilda Days 1 & 2 to Portland

Day 1

Two days that went very smoothly, apart from finding that I had put one mainsail slide in upside down! 

The train was on time and I opted to take the Bus from Southampton rather than train to Netley then picking up the same bus service, I was fortunate to cover the half mile walk in time to catch the bus with about 2 minutes to spare and I was in Hamble an hour or two earlier than would have been the case if I had continued by train.

One thing that puzzled me, I got to Southampton with one change of train and it cost c £25, the alternate service (2 out of every 3 trains during the day) involved three changes, tales longer and costs £42!

A very short hop on the water taxi out to the boat and I was underway at 14:20 more than an hour ahead of scheduled with the boat fully prepared for sea, to make the tide I had expected to have to put on the sheets etc whilst underway. It was a pleasantly warm afternoon with about 10 knots of wind a little east of south.

Hamble to the anchorage behind Hurst.

Entering Southampton water there was some commercial traffic so I continued under engine on the east side until it was past then headed towards Hurst, sailing from Calshot point and making good progress on the ebb tide. The wind started to veer when I was halfway and then died, I gave it an hour then motored the last few miles arriving at 17:35 for a quite but short night. 15 miles in five and a half hours.

The Hurst anchorage, I was much closer in then when I stopped
off here last year.

Day 2

A very early start was needed and I woke up an hour before the alarm and thought I might as well get started and was underway at 03:00. I have compensated a little by changing ships time to BST a couple of days early, partly to make tomorrows early start seem better but mainly because the instruments are still on BST from last year.

Leaving early turned out to be a good move. Going down the Needles channel the wind was only 4 or 5 knots from the north but with 3 knots and more of following tide there was not enough to maintain steerage in the strong tides of the channel so I motored out to SW Shambles when I got there and turned towards Anvil Point the wind piped up to c 10 knots and I had a Force 4 N - NE breeze  all the way to Portland vs the forecast E or NE, that was good news as I was going much faster and covered the 35 miles in 7 hours on one tide.

It was a bit chilly but not really cold and it warmed up quickly from about 9:30 and by lunch time it was 28 degrees.

Dawn off of St Alban's Head.

I was the only one in the main anchorage, not even a single
resident boat on the moorings, and just one boat on the moorings
outside of the marina.

Tomorrow is likely to be interesting, a breezy day is promised and I'll be using the inshore route rather later in the "gate" than I have done before, with a N or NE wind forecast I should even be able to sail round which at least will reduce the risk from Lobster pot floats. However the forecast wind strength for Saturday has been increasing over the last couple of days and if that trend continues it could make the inshore route iffy and I could be delayed,

Slide show of photos so far:

Click here for the next post.

Subscribe by e-mail

Google Blogger withdrew the subscribe by e-mail function, so I am trying out a third party one. It is in Test but it is looking good. If it works well I will also add this function to the Achilles site, but probably not until I get back from my next cruise.

No personal data is required, just an e-mail address that will not be shared or used for commercial purposes.

Click here to get email notification of new posts

2022 towards St Kilda: launching.

As in previous years I will be posting as and when I can, it would be best for new readers to check out my new (Nov 2022) introduction to the blog (Opens in a new tab / window) that explains how I go about writing the blog, its limitations whilst I am writing it whilst cruising and what some terms mean.

St Kilda (left) about 45 miles west of Harris in the Outer Hebrides.
In a small sailing boat, the lack of a protected anchorage and
a safe all weather passage back through or around the outer Isles,
at least a week of fair weather it required to safety visit.

I will probably have Iridium tracking on around the Scottish Islands and the Outer Hebrides but have not yet made a decision as to when I will activate it. I will turn if off when I am confident of getting timely weather reports and some email connectivity by other means for the rest of the trip, again see my "Tracking Sancerre page" for the Iridium tracking reports.

The Launch

Sancerre was launched on the 9th of March and I took her down river to one of the RAFYC's berths for a night before putting her on the mooring. 

Quite a pleasant 2 mile trip up the river in the dinghy. This is
the easiest way to get the car and the boat down to the RAFYC
 single handed. Pic about half way between Port Hamble and
Mercury marinas looking upstream on the first of the flood tide. 

Looking downstream from about the same point. When I came back
down, against the tide, there was also a force 5 wind on the nose
which would not have been pleasant in the dinghy..

Nicolson 55 "Lord Portal" moored near the top of the river, I sailed
on her in the 70s when she was one of 2 Nic 55's used by the RAF
for adventure training.

Launching at Deacon's yard, once a very traditional boat yard but
now under new ownership it is being modernised and homogenised,
probably not for the better, prices are certainly going up quickly so I'll
probably not be there next year, or at least not for as long.

Sancerre was launched @ 10:00 an hour and a bit after low water, 2 hours ahead of the orriginal schedule, I was told the previous afternoon so had to leave early to get down in time. Its a long drop to the water even two days off of neaps, I don't think they launch so near to low water on spring tides. The yard was busy that day so they moved the boat launched before Sancerre (On the pontoon at the end of the jetty in the pic above, waiting to be towed over to Swanwick marina, AKA Moody's) into the slings the previous day and parked Sancerre right behind for a quick start, when I left at c 10:45 a third boat was going in.

Whilst moored at the RAFYC I loaded heavy and awkward sized items that it was not sensible to do when she was ashore, set up the running rigging that was removed for the winter and fitted the mainsail, stack pack and lazy-jacks. I was lucky with the weather this morning, the wind being much lighter than forecast, so I was also able to get the 150% genoa rigged as well, a bit of a struggle single handed in any wind.

Most of the tinned food is loaded so after a few more hours of work and loading the rest of the food, clothes and bedding suitable for spring, and hopefully summer, I will be ready to go. 

Update 20th March: With the revised start date (see update at the end of the previous post) I loaded the rest of the non-perishable stores today and finished the odd jobs and the boat is ready to go, I just need to load clothes, perishable food and get the car home. to leave on the 25th or 26th.

Click here for day 1 of the trip.

Preparing for launch and the 2022 cruise towards St Kilda.

In anticipation of the web site disappearing (probably in the distant future) I have converted the more important threads into PDF documents so I'll have a continuing record. These are somewhat easier to read, I have not made any significant edits but there are fewer pictures and no video. Links from downloaded copies should still work if on line. I may later put further links to Flickr for videos but probably not for the slide shows because of the effort required and the likely hood of the Flickr library disappearing with the web site (with thousands of images it has to be paid for). 2022 S. Uist

Spoiler: Unfortunately the weather defeated me, I made it to South Uist in the outer Hebrides before running for shelter behind the Isle of Skye as the first of several gales approached, three weeks later there was no sign of a window opening either on the models or after talking to a forecaster so I headed for home to leave time for a late summer cruise around the Celtic Sea. 

Click here to jump to day 1 of the trip skipping the pre-amble.

As ever there was a number of minor jobs to do on the boat in addition to a good clean, routine maintenance and the more major jobs already on the Blog that were finished a while ago and I also ticked off a good number of things that have been on my list for a while. Now the boat is ready to go in the water and the plan is to launch on the 9th March and to go onto the RAFYC pontoon for a couple of days to fit the running rigging and load heavy and awkward sized items before moving to the mooring.

Then it will be down to the weather and tides, if the former cooperates I plan to be away on the neap tides the weekend before Easter hopefully taking advantage of easterly winds that frequently blow during April and which caused me a lot of grief last year when going the other way. That start date would enable me to break the trip west at Portland leaving there via the inshore route at dawn, it also gives plenty of time to get to Newlyn for a rounding of Lands End with favourable tides. 

The main objective for this cruise is to visit St Kilda and the Outer Hebrides that the weather and time pressures stymied last year.

St Kilda is about 50 miles west of South Harris, with no where
to go in bad weather (except north of the Butt of Lewis, itself not
a nice place in a blow) it will need close to a week of good weather
after getting to Barra or Harris so I could be waiting a long time.

After that  I am not sure, perhaps an extended cruise around the Scottish Islands, a cruise down the west of Ireland, along the Welsh coast and the Bristol Channel, or I might head off to the Shetland Islands, going to the extreme west of UK (if you ignore the small rock of Rockall) and Muckle Flugga the extreme north has a certain attraction and if I came down the east coast for a third round Britain I would have been to the extreme south (The Lizard), west, north and east on one cruise. We shall see.

This year I have had very little planning to do as a combination of the plans for 2021, 2022 and a plan to go round Ireland after the 2021 Jester Baltimore (that didn't happen) covers most of any likely trip. Updating all of my paper charts (14 "small craft" folios plus over 30 individual charts) was a different matter and took several days. 

The one piece of planning that is worth doing is working out the best date to leave, weather permitting, so as to be able to be able to use the Portland inshore route and to get round Land's End. 

Edit: The original post on choosing a start date has been removed as it has been superseded by my page Passage Planning - The Solent to Land's End, click here to read. 

Updates: 

Six weeks out several of the long range forecasts are suggesting northerly or easterly winds for the period (fairly common in April) possibly very light as the Azores high extends northwards, if that pans out going northwards could be a problem so a visit to the Isles of Scilly to wait for a favourable wind could be an attractive option.

Three and a half weeks out and all but one of the forecasts show light or very light winds, the outlier shows F7 for a few days but I am ignoring that for the moment and have booked a berth at the RAFYC to make loading up easier (especially the dinghy and outboard) and to avoid using the water taxi / club launch to get on and off when I take the car home.

18th March and all change! easterly winds are forecast from now to the end of March and into early April so I am taking advantage and am now planning to leave late on Friday the 18th or v early on the 19th. I might need the newly installed heater, but it should be dry and sunny.

Having chatted to a forecaster at Weatherweb there is then a reasonable chance of winds from the W or SW in early or mid April which would take me up the Irish sea on the Irish side but if the easterlies persist or I make a quick passage to Newlyn I can use the easterlies to go up the Welsh coat before crossing over to take my preferred route across the North Channel leaving from Norther Ireland.

Click here for Launch Day.