A Scotsman, an Englishman and an Irishman : Day 6

To watch the video please click or press READ MORE below.

Overnight was a bit of a challenge as we progressed up the Bristol Channel and in particular the St George’s channel. The main challenge being fog banks. Or should I say FOG BANKS! If you have never sailed a small craft in fog, it is difficult to understand the difficulty of trying to see any potential hazards, such as container ships, ferries and fishing boats in time to avoid them. Visibility was coming and going, we are doing 6 to 7 knots and they can be doing 20+ knots. So closure speed can be akin to a fast speedboat and with limited vision they can appear very close out of the bank. So you need to keep a close and continual watch on the horizon that you can see all around, and also on your instruments. We are fortunate that Wind Singer is equipped with AIS which is similar in use to radar, but easier to use. So not much sleep was had this night.

The morning brought us the Irish Sea and a very confused and lumpy sea state with pretty high winds. All well within the boat’s capability but at times the motion of a following sea, on a straight downwind run can be a bit unpleasant. Particularly if it lasts for hours and when you have the wind coming in the opposite direction from the tide, known as wind over tide. Fortunately non of the crew suffer from seasickness and we soldiered on. Our original intention was to pass close to the Isle of Man entering into the middle of the Northern Channel, before crossing to Scotland, but the conditions made us rethink. The new plan Nick (The Englishman) hatched was to head for the East coast of Ireland and run up to the tip of Belfast Lough. This new course gave 2 options that we could consider at the top of our run North. We could make a decision on conditions around 9pm and either turn East for Scotland if all was okay, or West for Bangor and overnight out of what would then be the bad weather.

Always difficult to photograph waves that do justice to them, but here goes, the images are from mid morning worsening later….