Ireland to Scilly
08 September 2021
by clare
Saturday 4 Sept. the crossing distance of 140 miles meant it was not possible to complete in daylight, so we set off mid-morning so that at least we would arrive in daylight on the Sunday. The forecast was for very light winds from the NE, which was the case for the first 3-4 hours and we were able to sail. But then as we got further away from Ireland the more it came from the SE (the direction we were heading) and increased in strength to 16-19kts until sunrise on Sunday. This boat doesn't make good speed heading into the wind especially with waves, so ended up motoring most of the crossing, often only being able to go at 3nm/hour.....slow progress! The journey was brightened with 3 visits by dolphins, but I think we were going too slowly for them to be interested in playing in the bow wave, so they didn't hang around.
We had a bit of a scare in the late afternoon as the engine stopped! A quick look at the engine and all looked in order. Relief. We thought the rough seas had churned up the fuel in the tanks and some dirt got in the engine. Jay switched to a different fuel filter and cleaned the other one and thankfully it worked fine for the rest of the journey.
For the crossing we did 2hours on watch and 2hours off, mostly the boat is on autopilot but still need to keep a look out for boats and, when near land, a look out for the dreaded lobster pots, which we have seen several miles off shore and set in water over 80m deep. Sadly no nice moon or stars to look at, it was just very dark, being impossible to tell the difference between the sea and the sky.
The wind started to reduce in the morning, just to be replaced with fog, but thankfully visibility was still about 100m. We made it to New Grimsby, the water between the Islands of Tresco and Bryher on Scilly at 13.00 on sunday. We set anchor, had lunch and went ashore to explore Tresco.
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