without it: I call it ‘lady luck’ and believe
that preparation keeps harmony between
skipper and vessel, which is essential to
attract luck.
Dawn on 17 April and A-Jay and I
headed out between the St Peter Port pier
heads, bound for Weymouth on a grotty
morning. My troubled mind was deep in
the dark depths of somewhere else. The
poor weather had been forecast, but I had
a four-hour window in which to beat a
retreat and it promised better later, so I
stuck with it. Breakfast of cold baked
beans was taken off the Casquets, as the
front arrived heralded by driving rain, with
winds touching 30 knots.
My little Sadler pitched and heaved in
the big seas as I marked our slow
progress each hour on the waterproof
chart. The sun smiled on us soon after,
though I suffered the first breakage, a
webbing strap on my stack pack.
The weather remained solidly contrary
as I bashed westwards, lady luck clearly
elsewhere, though the conditions brought
benefits: no-one showed up to claim their
reserved berths in Fowey or Falmouth.
A-Jay is a small boat, and conditions were
lively, but she informed me she was well
up to anything that could be thrown at her
and I was happy with that.
From dreamy Padstow, I turned A-Jay
north for Milford Haven, quite the worst
passage of the trip. Gale leftovers meant a
sea state that combined with tide to throw
the boat around like I had never known
and my spirits wavered, as the wind
perched on the nose like a scratchy
pince-nez. Dolphins kept me sane and
triumph entered my soul as I anchored
inside little Dale Bay, just inside the mouth
of Milford Haven.
After three days of gales, I headed
across the Irish Sea for Arklow but
tribulation stalked me, for the tiller pilot
spat out its £450 dummy (the ram broke)
halfway across. Grumbling I took the
helm, swinging north, unable to deploy
the windvane with the wind hard astern.
We slewed either side of my course,
surfing on gentle rollers off
the port quarter.
At dusk I hove-to for a
break and to gather my
night time gear – thermals,
head torch, hot drink,
cockpit-food, binoculars
and pilotage notes.
I entered Arklow at
midnight and tied up in
heavy rain in the putrid
Fish Dock, Beethoven my
companion in book and
music form. Supper
bubbled on the stove; my
cabin gloriously dry.
I continued north and from Dublin,
where I collected a new tiller pilot, headed
back east to Holyhead from where I set
out for the Isle of Man on a breezy
blue-sky morning, which gave me almost
the only glorious full day’s sail of the entire
trip. There, moored in lovely Port St Mary
with not a care in the world, the black dog
of depression somehow seeped through
my cabin washboards and invaded my
soul. It was not entirely unexpected, for I
had felt the signs on that passage from
Padstow, but two days later in a frenzy
designed to throw off this curse, I set out
north for Bangor challenging an adverse
tide into a breezy dawn.
Lady luck must have been on holiday for
soon the stack pack lines collapsed in a
tangled mess on the deck, the kicker
detached from the boom, the autopilot’s
tiller pin snapped off and the engine
stopped in teasing waves. Time for ‘Plan
B’ so I swung the little Sadler to the west,
and made for tiny Ardglass, A-Jay going
like a train on a glorious broad reach.There I was welcomed by Arthur the
enormous pontoon cat and soon had
A-Jay shipshape. Someone arrived to fix
the tiller pin – word travels fast in these
parts because I certainly didn’t summon
him. He was from Jersey, but in the
circumstances I could hardly hold that
against him!
I headed north and my obsessive engine
checks uncovered an expensive
water-pump failure in Bangor marina –
close to where my soldier’s boots had
touched down 37 years earlier. Next was
the North Channel atop the Irish Sea: a
fearsome stretch of water where millions
of tons of edgy sea roars back and forth
between rocky shoulders. Today the
Channel was at peace and Gigha Island
gave me respite at the start of my soggy
entry into Scottish waters.
Spinning through Cuan Sound and
reaching past Mull for Tobermory raised my
spirits, though my boatspeed was no match
for a cheeky Wayfarer dinghy that sailed
up to and then away from me. I dropped
anchor off Tobermory, comfortably ahead
of the advancing fronts that dumped wetly
onto the cabin top that night.
Next morning, rain squalls reduced
visibility as I sailed round Ardnamurchan
Point, just ahead of the next front that kept
A-Jay surfing gloriously north under genoa
to tired, dispirited little Mallaig. The day
after that I entered the Sound of Sleat in
strong winds, to rendezvous briefly with
another solo sailor heading the other way.
A-Jay creamed along under full genoa
completely untroubled by the weather,
dipping under Skye Bridge as I celebrated
with smoked salmon on rye.
Slipping up the charted ‘submarineGUERNSEY TO SHETLAND... AND BACK
Grey skies through the Sound of
Sleat on the west coast of ScotlandLeaving Jack Sound off the Pembrokeshire coast ➜