We're on our way...

We're on our way...

Hello everyone, welcome to the first post on the blog so fingers crossed all is rosy! 

Sun 24th May, 16.15

I'm writing this in the middle of the Irish Sea in brilliant sunshine and no wind whatsoever - it feels like we are already in the Azores! There are however many miles to go before that, and I'm sure some less clement weather. 

Anyway to catch up thus far: Dragon was launched in Inverness towards the end of April, after some major work by Martyn and friends and shamefully little from me as I was still away at uni. During her time on the hard her mast was lowered and all standing and running rigging; cables, lights and aerials up there replaced and the mast track etc all well lubricated. On the boat itself a huge amount of time was spent fitting all sorts of safety gear and making sure everything already there worked, in order to pass a safety inspection in Falmouth before the start. We've about a week before then and there are still a few odd jobs left to do to conform with the 80 pages of safety rules provided; as I write Martyn is labelling all the potentially detached “floaty” things like lifebuoys and so on.

The fully reassembled boat left Inverness in the first week of May with Martyn and Walter on board to transit the Caledonian Canal to Oban, yours truly still AWOL due to uni commitments. She sat for a couple of weeks on a buoy in Dunstaffnage before Martyn, Don and Graham set off for the trip south proper. Graham jumped ship in Gigha and I joined Dragon on Wednesday evening in Stranraer, enjoying/enduring the delights of Scottish bus travel on the way. I'm pretty sure I can think of ways to be less comfortable for more money, but I’d have to be imaginative.

Thursday morning, 5am (oh, for it to have been 26 hours earlier!) saw us motoring out of the rather shallow marina at Stranraer, which although I only saw it in pleasant enough weather was not nearly as bad as I had been led to believe and I spent an enjoyable hour sat outside a cafe in the centre of town whilst I waited for Dragon to arrive.

The forecast of moderate NW winds that had led us to estimate an easy beam reach of roughly 16 hours straight to Dublin was not quite as accurate as its makers had hoped: the passage actually became 26 hours beating (zig zagging as you can’t sail straight into the wind) as the breeze actually materialised as a hugely variable SW. Still, it was nice to see both the Belfast and Isle of Man coasts from close by.

Don is from Dublin and met Martyn though sailing in a boat partially owned by the Commodore of Royal St George Yacht Club in Dún Laoghaire and so we were welcomed to stay on their pontoon and use their phenomenal faculties. And, due to the rather prestigious nature of the club, Martyn wore a shirt (photographic evidence provided below)! 

Our welcome to Ireland could not have been friendlier: every person we met was friendly, helpful, generous and interesting. We will almost certainly be back on the return journey north. I’d never been to the Republic of Ireland before and it was an especially interesting day to experience it for the first time as we arrived at 7am on the day of the referendum (equal marriage and reducing the age required to be president to 21). There was definitely a high level of engagement and it reminded me of the days surrounding the Scottish independence referendum last year. The next day there was a palpable sense of pride at the overwhelming “yes” vote for equal marriage rights - and the result of the second question? “Nobody knows, and nobody really cares” was the answer. It does seem pretty unlikely that anyone below the current age limit would become president anyway. 

We spent much of our time in Dublin doing jobs on the boat: spray painting the storm job so that sat least 50% of its area is brightly coloured and making a way of hoisting it over the furled genoa, then test hoisting it and the trisail. We also fitted the wheel attachment and clutch for the windvane steering, which will steer the boat without using battery power like the autopilot does. We also narrowly avoided a fire when the hot knife rolled onto its trigger and ignited a bag of safety gear from an old liferaft that was sat on the chart table seat. Luckily I happened to go down below at just the right time and so we could throw the bag overboard and put it out. This is how me and Martyn spent 10 minutes leaning over the edge of the pontoon of probably Ireland’s most prestigious yacht club catching slightly singed survival bags and other assorted safety equipment!

Don left us in Dublin, but not until after an evening at a real Irish pub and a real Irish Italian restaurant! The first and only other time I had sailed with Don was to Norway three years ago so it was great to see him again: there is never a dull moment with him around. During the evening we discovered that maybe the British stereotype of excessive obedience is more true than I had thought when we were called out to by a passing couple for buying a ticket onto the DART (local commuter train system) when one of the gates was just open, we still only ended up paying one way however!

We left at a (slightly delayed) 5am again this morning (Don: “With Martyn, it’s always ‘Let’s leave at 5’!”), and started the day with a gentle following Northerly, again not quite what was forecast in terms of direction. We took advantage of the light winds to try to figure out the new wind vane self steering - a serious piece of engineering - and its various quirks; although this morning we were never quite able to get it, in the gentle wind that has picked up as I have been writing it is now steering us upwind perfectly.

We also spent a while with the huge green, dragon festooned, gennaker up; the pictures really don’t give an accurate impression of quite how huge it is to hoist and man-handle back onto the deck. We've also taken down the furling cruising genoa and started using the racing ones which you change for a smaller sail as the wind gets stronger. On the back of the boat is an inflatable dan buoy, or floating flagpole that you throw in to show the position of a man overboard more clearly, which was out of date and looking past its best to say the least. As it needed servicing anyway we decided to test it and got a surprise when it worked!

Competing with the windvane steering for most useful addition to the boat is the AIS (Automatic Identification System) which has been amazing. It shows on the chartplotter the position, speed, direction, name, size, closest point of approach and time of said passing, and much more about any ships in the area and sets off an alarm if one gets close, making watch keeping much easier. You can see the a map of all the ships and Dragon whilst we are close enough to the shore and underway by going to www.vesselfinder.com and searching for Dragon of Hamble. If we are sailing then we should appear and you can see where we are and so on! If you can’t see us we are probably tied up somewhere.

Anyway, that’s where we are at now, and this is what long distance sailing should be like: the boat is only needing our attention occasionally, there is plenty of food and drink and the wind is gentle and sea is smooth enough to allow you to walk about unhindered, and the AIS is giving us plenty of warning of any large ships in the area. We’re relaxing and getting some jobs done in case it gets worse during the 24-36 hours that it is likely to take to get to the Isles of Scilly so I’ll leave it there for now. I'm not to sure if I should be thanking you, applauding you or asking if you are procrastinating if you've read this far! Hopefully future posts will be shorter and less spread out, although the posting will be pretty sporadic as to when we get wifi.

Fair winds and calm waters,

Jamie

Monday 25th May, 02.30

The winds up to a good force 5 or 6 from the W or NW and we’re bowling along under double reefed main and the furling genoa, which me and Tim have just finished putting a few rolls into to calm things down as we were approaching the level that the autopilot starts to struggle. Even after reefing though, Dragon keeping up an average of 7 knots over the ground against the tide. 

After dinner (lasagne, although a pre-prepared one) the wind died back off and then shortly came back and built from the NW, as was predicted in the earlier radio forecasts. We motored for a while in the calm then turned head to the wind and hoisted the smaller furling genoa for the night (although it was already pretty dark by this point) due to the wind being forecast to build up. Once we had hoisted the sail we headed off on our new course and hit the stop button for the engine. Nothing happened. Eventually the manual stop button on the side of the engine was located and pressed and the engine stopped. The cause of the problem turned out to be simple: in my cabin on the edge of the bed there are two large red lever switches: one for each set of batteries; unfortunately, whilst getting dressed in the dark I must have caught one on my boots or something and switched it off. Still, it was a good exercise in practising fault finding: silver linings and so on…

We’re back on watches after our earlier excitement but Martyn is just up and the wind's up some more so about to put the third and final reef in the main.

3.20

That’s the mainsail now third reefed and we’re still making 7 knots, the wind is up quite a bit. Its absolutely amazing outside: the sea is now moderate and every white top is highlighted by a flash of green bioluminescence in the moonless night; our wake is a green roadway stretching back behind us and the bow wave is a green arrow through the sea, pointing to our destination as our course is straight for the Isles of Scilly for the first time in the passage. Fantastic.

We’re now around 15 nautical miles off the southern tip of Wales and the waters around here are pretty busy: we avoided a number of ships earlier when the engine was on. Now however the only boat within a few miles is another small vessel that is about 8 miles behind us on exactly the same course that we are pulling away from, not that we’re counting or anything! If it were not for us both having AIS we would have no idea of there existence nor they ours, all we know about our accidental companion is a size: 37ft, and that their name is More Madness. Ships that pass in the night and so on.

Tuesday 26th May 10.41

First light on Monday saw us cruising along comfortably with little change from earlier, in fact very little changed - other than the wind easing so we shook out the reefs and rigged a preventer to stop the boom banging about - until we were only a few miles off our destination when the mist off to port lifted like a curtain at the theatre and the Isles of Scilly suddenly appeared to conduct their opening act. The setting sun illuminated the scene in a manner fitting with the theatre metaphor and it all produced an impressive welcome, as none of us had been to the Scillies before. We put into Port St Mary’s, and in one of those miracles of modern technology we were getting messages from people watching us on AIS as we arrived, which was a little surreal! We found a mooring that we have paid for for three nights so intend to spend a couple of days doing further jobs on the boat and exploring the islands a little.
Internet connection not very good so will post pictures later. Feel free to add any comments.