(02 July)- Day 1 - On passage and off passage

That's us ready to go and flying our new blue ensign from the Cruising Association!

The weather was perfect to set off, with a westerly  F3 and little sea state. Unfortunately, by the afternoon the wind had grown and backed to a F4 right from the south. By early evening found our selves reaching too and fro but struggling to make any headway south, as the wind built towards the top of F5. It looked like being a bumpy night at sea, but luckily we were about 3 hours from the shelter of the north side of the Llyen. By last light, which was 2200 ish,  we had picked up a buoy in Porthdinllaen, had hot dinner on, a bottle open and were relaxing in the welcome shelter of the little harbour. Many thanks to the harbour master for answering the phone mid-evening and offering us free use of any vacant mooring. It would have been nice to row ashore to the excelletn Ty Coch, but we were all too tired.

Progress Day One - HH to a welcome vistors mooring in Porthdinllaen

01 July - Last chance for preparations !

The time for planning and procrastination is over and the time for action is near. It's too late now to change of minds of heart, put things off or find excuses.

Our passage plan - don't use this
for navigation, do your own !

 The skies are cloudless, the winds are light and the weather looks perfect.There are a few small jobs still to be done, gear to be stowed but the crew are heading this way. Gosh this is exciting!

Annabella - straining for the off 

Visit Dun Laoghaire now !

A great visit to Dun Laoghaire over the weekend, and a warm welcome from the National Sailing Club, who hosted the club cruise from Holyhead. Thanks to SY Jibbity for inviting us to raft on.

Dun Laoghiare is a direct passage from Holyhead, has full access and is well protected.

We skipped the full session with live music - as we had to be up and around on the Sunday, but had a great meal and a couple of pints at The Lighthouse.

We'll be coming back here !

Dolphin encounter in the Irish Sea

28 May17. Fantastic encounter with a pod of around 10 - 12 dolphins literally in the midlle of the Irish Sea.

They stayed with us for about 5 to 10 minutes and gave us a spectacular display, swimming through the bow wave, diving under the boat and jumping clear of the water,often two or three abreast.
Fantastic - thankyou dolphins !

Hoorah!

...the lid of the ice box is fixed !

The Kit Bag Scene

The Sail Making Box

We've had the sail making box to carry out some minor repairs.

Just replacing some press studs on the halyard bags..

We've been on a journey

Twilight in Pwllheli

The marina descends in to darkness...

.. and our berth is cloaked in night.

Life raft !

Ladies and gentlemen, bravo to "Waypoint" who just returned our life raft after a three year service, all done and returned in a little over a week. For those of you who are interested, a key part of the service is to replace the items which go out of date - such as the pyrotechnics.
The internal light was replaced as part of the service, as it was going out of date. One rarely gets the opportunity to see this type of thing outside of a crises situation, so perhaps never. and is shown below for information:

We did extensive research before choosing the Waypoint raft, and in the end the choice was based on the the combination of confidence in the design, confidence in manufacturing quality control and someone working the boat show stand who new the detial of the product quite thoroughly, but it's by no means the cheapest. That's obviously not to say that other liferafts are not any good, but that this is the one we chose to bet on, if we had to in a crises. I've become accsutomed to breathing air not water, how about you ?