We ended up spending longer in Ramsey than we had hoped because the weather decided to give us South or South-West winds for over a week and we didn’t really fancy a long hard slog into the wind and waves all the way back to Wales. So we had a bit of a rest in Ramsey until the wind backed round to the East and North East to let us make progress towards Holyhead.
We had been parked on the scrubbing grid in Ramsey so we could have a good check on everything below the waterline in readiness for winter. The anodes on the folding props were almost completely eroded so they were renewed and we also had some signs of water getting into the sail drive leg of the gearbox on the starboard engine, so we fitted new oil seals to the prop shaft to remedy that. Not knowing what size the seals were we had to buy them from the Volvo parts supplier at a cost of over £13 each – I can get the same thing from an industrial supply company for less than £2!!!! I think we will be carrying a few spare seals on board from now on. Both those jobs were expected and my inspections of everything else underwater revealed no more surprises and no more jobs requiring attention – a good result!!!
We had to visit a few pubs during our extended stay and we came across some very interesting characters!!! We were listening to an old couple and their son in one pub and it was like watching an episode of Till Death us Do Part – first she was complaining about their hotel because she had got locked out of her room the night before while going to the loo down the corridor (it doesn’t bear thinking about) and then they had been kicked out for the day and not allowed back until late afternoon – they were not going to pay them by the end of the ranting!!! Next an old man came in with two or three newspapers and sat down with his crisps, peanuts and pint – all pretty normal we thought until he took out an old tobacco tin and tipped his peanuts into it before eating them out of the tin, then we noticed he had brought in last Sundays paper (this was a Saturday), and finally he carefully folded up his empty packets, put them in his tin and took them with him!!! A very entertaining afternoon it has to be said – it really would have made a great sit-com script.
We also had to contend with some really high Spring Tides last weekend, at one point we were almost level with the road alongside the harbour, along the seafront the strong winds also made for some very impressive waves crashing over the wall onto the road and the traffic. We also met a lovely couple on their boat behind us, Roger and Jean have lived aboard for 25 years and he will be 91 next Feb, they were both still pretty fit and active and still enjoying their life on board.
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| A Stormy Day in Ramsey | Nearly on the Road – High Spring Tide |
Eventually the wind did back round to the NE and ease below F6 to let us escape from Ramsey and head down the SE coast of the Isle of Man to Castletown for one night before heading back across the Irish Sea to Holyhead. We had hoped for a fairly nice crossing with F4-5 winds from the NE and slight to moderate seas, the wind was OK at F5 nearly F6, but the sea state was pretty horrible because the waves seemed to be coming from the SE and combined with the NE wind to give a very mixed up, uncomfortable sea – typical Irish Sea really. We were very glad to get tied up in Holyhead, at least the wind made for a pretty quick crossing of just 6hrs dock to dock for the 45nm passage.
We had a nice few days in Holyhead catching up with everything that had happened over the summer and seeing a lot of friends to catch up on the gossip etc. The weather was nice and sunny with light winds so last Thursday we set off for Caernarfon on our last passage of the year. Conditions were ideal with a 15knt NE offshore breeze, flat seas and sunny skies so we raised sail in the harbour, motor sailed to the Stacks and then sailed all the way to Caernarfon Bar at 7 – 8 knts, a lovely trip to finish off the summer. We are now tied up for the winter in Victoria Dock and we probably will not move until next April.
For anyone who is interested in the facts and figures of our summer adventures we covered 2160 nm at an average speed of 6knts. Total time on passage was 362hrs, this is 7.5% of the time we were away, 21% of the time we managed to sail, 17% was motor sailing and 62% was motoring, so you can see that we did an awful lot more motoring than we would have liked seeing as we are supposed to be a sailing boat!!!
We hope you have all enjoyed reading about our travels and are not too jealous of our adventures – you just need to think about what you really want in this life and then make it happen. This will be the last blog update until next Spring but we will have Internet access all winter in Caernarfon so you can email us, text us or even phone – our mobile numbers are still the same. We are heading back to Oswestry for a week to catch up with friends and family so we are looking forward to seeing a lot of you next week.
