Pwllheli to Milford Haven

Friday's blog post - Friday 29 July 2016

We departed Pwllheli at 0700 after saying good-bye to Jamie who had to return home. Fortunately John had arrived to replace him, and Avril came to wave us off too. There was a reasonable wind initially to put us on a close reach starboard tack, although the sea was rather ‘lumpy’. After a while the sea flattened and the wind came from further behind to give us a reasonable sail. Eventually however, as we progressed further across Cardigan Bay, the wind died too and we had to use the motor to maintain progress. Out in the bay there was nothing to see except the grey sea itself and a sky of similar colour – no other vessels and  no land. We plodded on. Eventually the sea was flat enough to brave going below and preparing a lunch of stewing steak and vegetables. The left-overs became our dinner later in the day too. It was very nice, but the steak was a bit tough – we decided that the butcher had ‘seen us coming’ or perhaps thought we had asked for ‘chewing steak’ instead of ‘stewing steak’! We took turns in going below for a lie down. Eventually South Wales turned up on the port bow and we motored through Ramsey Sound, the narrow stretch of water between the island of Ramsey and the mainland as we listened to music on deck. I had a message from Dan to say he was feeling a little better, which was brilliant! We were welcomed into the seas beyond the Ramsey Sound by huge numbers of birds and dolphins. The birds were resting in the sea and as we motored past them they all flew off to the sound of Take That singing ‘the world comes alive’ – a magical moment which we caught on camera! Onwards we motored as it turned dark, past Skomer and finally into Milford Haven as we picked our way through the flashing lights of the navigation buoys. As we motored down the Haven towards the marina we made radio contact with harbour control and were asked to navigate along the north side of the harbour to make way for a large tanker exiting the Haven. Dolphins made another appearance, this time very close to the boat, jumping and playing alongside us as we made our final approach to the marina which we entered via a lock. A wonderful day to remember!

Joke:

When the chemist died they had to barium.

Approaching St David's Point

 The birds greeting us after passing through Ramsey Sound heading towards Skomer

Click on THIS LINK to see another video of us sailing through the flock of birds
(If you can't get the video to play, try it on your pc, or try using Firefox as your browser and clicking the 3 dots in the top right hand corner and selecting 'request desktop site')

Locking in to Milford Haven marina late at night