AVOCET - 3rd - 6th October 2002 Graham Platts

Well it was all my brothers fault.

‘Avocet’ was moored in Fleetwood Marina at great expense. I offered to remove ‘Smokey’ from the berth at Skippool to make room for ‘Avocet’ and Brian wanted to have one more sailing trip on the Irish Sea before the end of the season.

Wanting to clock up more sea miles and gain more experience, I allowed myself to be persuaded to forfeit a couple of workdays and be asked where I would like to go.

After a few greedy, over ambitious/impossible suggestions and dependant on the conditions of the day, the skipper would have the final say.

Four days sailing to take in possible options of; SW to Anglesey, W to IOM, N to Whitehaven, perhaps include Piel Island en route or any combination.

Part of the plan was to arrive at the marina immediately after attending a Wednesday evening ‘day skipper’ course at Fleetwood Nautical College; motor out of the lock gates onto a mooring buoy that night, ready for an early start Thursday morning.

Next door neighbour, Dave, a fellow ‘day skipper’ scholar dropped me of by the gates of the marina thirty minutes late due to an overrun of the course, in the pouring rain, complete with luggage to be met by a soaked brother and consequently missed the lock out times of the marina. So far, so good!

Well Dave wanted to see the boat anyway and was duly invited on board for tea and biscuits. I could not help noticing his visible scanning of the interior of the cabin and its contents. I think he was suitably impressed or was it awe.

No sooner had our visitor left Brian started to impress me with his culinary skills by cooking one of my favourites ‘Spag Boll’ (vegetarian style of course) followed by a nice cup of hot chocolate while we attempted to decide the four-day plan.

After all the deliberating the only positive decision we made was to wait until the 5:30 a.m. weather forecast.

Spoilt by the calm enclosed waters of the marina I slept well. So well in fact I missed the forecast. Responsible Brian on the other hand, slept uneasy repeatedly waking to half a dozen false 5:30 dreamy alarms.

S.Westerlies veering westerly to N.Westerly during the day meant the first passage sailing to Anglesey the best option. Working on an average of 4 knots, the 56 miles should be easily within our grasp.

Losing a couple of hours sailing time waiting for the lock gates to open allowed us sufficient time to have a leisurely breakfast, (vegetarian style of course), none of your traditional sausage and bacon for the next four days now matey!

The initial stage was calm and we motored till way past the fairway buoy accompanied by only one or two other cruisers, but eventually the breeze increased and we are sailing, with clear views off the coast of Blackpool, the tower and beyond.

After a couple of hours and a couple of snacks or so, the skipper ensured the course was being maintained and took his first of many snoozes, leaving me to hog the helm ooohhheeerrrr.

Well I did ask for the experience and he did have a restless night bless him.

With the joys of open sea, a steady breeze and no traffic to worry about, this sailing seemed quite straight forward, stress free and enjoyable, however the weatherman/woman failed in his/her promise of the wind veering N. It became increasingly difficult to pinch against the wind to maintain the required heading for Anglesey.

I thought I saw a Dolphin, I did see a Dolphin and then his mate, just outside Liverpool Bay of all places. Big brother confirmed.

Partly due to wind not veering to the North, the tides and currents not being in our favour, the night drawing in and the need to do some serious beating we inevitably lost a lot of ground and time.

We admitted defeat on reaching Anglesey that night and scoured the coast between the Rhyll and Colwyn Bay to find a nice sheltered spot (bolt hole) for a comfortable night.

Not having suitable local pilotage we headed for what we thought looked like a harbour wall. As we drew nearer, the harbour transformed into a…..caravan park?

This was as good as it gets, Brian did a few depth of tide calculations and decided to anchor anyway. All would be revealed in the morning.

Another hearty meal (vegetarian of course) washed down with a small beer and satisfied that we were not dragging, settled in for a well-earned kip.

I was almost asleep when it started and fearing the worst, I thought we had drifted towards the shore and obviously in some kind of serious trouble, my mind imagining every conceivable tragedy.

The waves were choppy, the tide was going out, ‘Avocet’ was grounding and after each wave we dropped with a thud on the seabed. The noise and vibration caused me concern and I questioned the ability of the boat to withstand the treatment.

I was told quite calmly, yes we are grounding, the boat can stand it, designed to do this, perfectly normal, quite safe, go back to sleep, but I did see him go out with a pole to feel the substance of the seabed.

I was almost asleep again when it happened, I felt a tickling sensation on my face and immediately brushed it aside only to be repeated a few minutes later ………..and then again. A fumbled examination in the dark revealed a precariously balanced 5ft deck scrubber dislodged by the banging of the boat, each time the boat rolled the head swung towards my face. Lucky it was just the deck scrubber; you should have seen all the other items I had to share the fore cabin with.

I was almost asleep again when it started, a repeat performance when the tide returned, except Brian had paddled out and repositioned the anchor (and Avocet) to lessen the impact.

We had anchored just off a place called Abergele directly opposite yes, a caravan park. It was quite plain to see now there was no harbour for miles.

After the ordeal of last night/early morning, ‘Avocet’ was sitting pretty (except for Brian’s wet clothing that he’d used to reposition the anchor draped over the guard rails) with picturesque views of the Welsh coastline.

The plan was; no need to rush, good breakfast (vegetarian of course) and continue to Beaumaris with plenty of time to go ashore and stretch our ‘sea legs’.

Leaving Abergele we saw all the perfectly suitable anchorage places where we could have stayed all the way along Colwyn Bay towards Llandudno.

The scenery was spectacular, passing Little then Great Ormes Head towards Puffin Island and Anglesey with Snowdonia as a backdrop. Neither of us had a camera but the vision is firmly planted.

Approaching Puffin Island we decided not to follow a small cruiser, probably a local knowledgeable sailor taking a short cut into the Menai Straits avoiding the charted route around the island.

After a bit of a tussle with the tide and current we were soon motoring down the Strait following the ‘short cutter’

Although a sheltered visitors mooring area was marked behind No 10 port buoy we opted for one of many empty private moorings closer to the pier at Beaumaris being more convenient to row ashore. The original planned ETA to enable a daylight wander round the town slipped somewhat, so we decided to feed ourselves first (vegetarian of course) and then take a look round the castle before a quick walk and a little liquid refreshment at the local hostelries.

The castle was closed and after a scan around the perimeter decided not to rekindle our mountaineering skills in fear of being constrained on the inside until the following season, although a ‘stretch’ could be one answer to my weight problem.

We needed milk for the morning and to save lugging it round the town returned to the dinghy just in time to prevent it from being swept away by the in-coming tide.

Beaumaris is a quaint little place, well worth the visit and the beer, well, that was all right too I suppose, not being the drinking type of course.

I allowed Brian to row back, in the dark and against the tide, I also allowed him to make the hot chocolate before ‘turning in’ hopefully for a peaceful night, tomorrow might be a long day depending on the early morning forecast which I allowed Brian to wake for. Well he is the skipper!

The forecast gave us strong NW winds 4-5 occasional 6 but at least in the right direction and we planned for a single hop all the way to Fleetwood, a night mooring by Knott End and a leisurely cruise the following morning up the R. Wyre to ‘Avocet’s’ next home the jetty at Skippool.

At a higher tide we took the short cut avoiding Puffin Island and set our course straight for Fleetwood. The going was good, in fact the further we sailed the better more challenging and exciting it became, the strong winds materialised along with some rain, until maybe 10 miles or so from home we battled against the force 6,s and the on coming darkness. I now know what weather helm is! Brian still managed to get his snoozes in though, something about needing to store energy to handle any impending emergencies.

This was the third time I’d sailed into Fleetwood, once before on ‘Avocet’ with Brian & Elizabeth and once on Paget’s Lady a 35 footer but not in conditions like this. Visibility was poor enough to cause a struggle searching for and missing the fairway buoy, (was it continuous flashing or groups of 9?) difficult to tell, ships were everywhere and we probably lost a couple hours.

The best was to come; on arrival at the mooring buoys we had to contend with the strong tidal flow making it extremely difficult to pace the speed in order for me to retrieve the chosen buoy. So difficult in fact that when I did eventually hook the ring, the hook got wedged and couldn’t get it free. It had to be the pole or me and I quickly made a decision, sorry Brian. Fortunately a second pole and a second attempt proved successful. Oh what fun!

What a day, exhilarating but tiring, we were both more than ready for a drink and a hearty meal (vegetarian of course).

Realising that we had to wait for the tide with no need to get up early in the morning gave us a welcome relief. I didn’t get the good nights kip I was looking forward to though on account of the mooring buoy continually nudging and rubbing against the hull adjacent to my head making an awful racket. I wasn’t going to sort it out and I think Brian was oblivious. Never mind!

A quiet, pleasant, peaceful, relaxing morning with the sun shining as we watched the early golfers teeing off from the second at Knott End Golf Club. What a contrast to last night, where did that storm go?

With no rush we savoured a leisurely breakfast (vegetarian of course) and mused while listening to a VHF conversation between the harbour master and a cruising skipper leaving the marina asking, "We seem to have gone aground, can you tell us which side the channel is on?" quite entertaining really but I seem to remember somebody else running aground in just about the very same place only a few months earlier.

The only chart I possess guided us calmly up the R. Wyre passed Stanah slipway and Wardley’s Creek into the pool near the Blackpool and Fleetwood sailing club who were out in force racing in the Sunday competition. What a glorious reception!

I soon recognised and pointed out the berth with its recently white painted identification board (I knew that would be useful), we did a quick sail-past and berthed easily with plenty of time to adapt the existing mooring facilities to accommodate ‘Avocet’. We stayed and monitored the boat dropping with the fall of the tide until both satisfied all was well.

The only thing that remained now was to dig out the two collapsible velocipedes and make our way back down the river to the marina to retrieve Brian’s van. During the cycle back we had a bank side viewpoint where we could plainly see the ideal track of the deepest path of the river and made mental notes.

On returning to the berth we had to make two trips loading all the paraphernalia Brian needed to take back to Norfolk including the mainsail, which was going back to the manufacturers to cure the annoying, continuous and noisy ‘luffing’ that was impossible to get rid of. An untouched bottle of red wine that I’d nursed all the way to Anglesey and back was also loaded which should have accompanied the first nights Spaghetti meal.

Another passage, a few more sea miles, an unforgettable experience and a few more lessons learned under my belt.

One day ‘Smokey’ and I will venture into the Irish Sea.