If you have to choose a famous person to name a sail after, the trip from Templeton would be named after John Major. It was John Major in every way, grey, boring, cold, lots of (u)turns and went on rather too long. So this blog doesn't find us in the industrial surroundings of Holyhead or the entertainment centre of Dublin, we are in what was the centre of Irish shipping, the well known (not) town of Arklow.
We decided to put into Arklow for a number of reasons, not only, what wind there was, was truly on the nose to anywhere in north wales, but we also had a couple of fears. It's funny that when you sail other peoples boats if there is a problem you say something like 'Hmm. Bit of diesel in the bilges.' or 'Tiller's got some play in it.' and you don't think about it again. When it's your own home and the centre of your world, these things play on your mind and you start playing the 'What If' scenario game. What if that 'funny feeling' stops us being able to steer? What if the little diesel leak develops into a deluge? Primarily it was because we wanted to get these problems sorted that we stopped short.
Having said that we stopped short, we still clocked some 80 miles at sea and saw some remarkable sights and had some new experiences. When in the Solent the Coast Guard reports navigational dangers you think of tanker collisions in the English Channel or maybe a light not working on a mark. Today we heard about the usual sort of lost fishing gear but there were also reports of a dead whale directly in our path. To make matters more eerie as we started to get close to it's reported position the pod of dolphins that had been playing and frolicking with us all morning disappeared. Would we see the horrible sight? I am pleased to report that we didn't and we sailed west and north in what breeze we had.
The day was also cold, cold, cold. We have turned into fanatic weather watchers. In Templeton Bay there was not a cloud in the sky, this meant that all the heat disappeared in the night. Come morning all that coldness was sealed in by more cloud and it was freezing out on the water. To make matters worse we could see in the afternoon that again the cloud was clearing meaning we would have a very, very cold night at sea. By 4 pm Fiona had on all the kit she owned, thermal pants, thermal tights, thermal leggings, 2 pairs of socks, musto salopettes, a vest, 2 thermal tops, a gillet, 2 thick fleeces, offshore trousers, a hat and a scarf. We are after all supposed to be having fun and this is not a delivery.
So Arklow and a warm bed beckoned and after making entry into the port at night which is only 30 meters wide we happily stopped in 0.4 meters of water (under the keel) in the harbour. We did our secondary port calculations and reckoned the depth would drop by 0.1. Then a fisherman put fear into us and said there was another meter of drop. This would mean we would be fully aground and on our side. What followed was an hour of frantic maths to confirm we were right and the fisherman was wrong. Now it's time for a warm and stress free sleep.
More dolphins.
Just how cold is it.
Fiona gives an overview of the days sail via youtube
here.