Llandwyn

A club outing with not superb weather forecasts to Llandwyn.  Mark Sutcliffe on True Brit as Office of the Day doing a superb job in guiding his sheep.

Weather

Glen forgot to save the weather predicted by the Coastguard onto the computer.

However, the winds experienced were SW F5 to SW F0
Calm Sea
Good visibility

Route

Notes

It was an early start - nursing a hangover, we left the Point to get on Genesis to begin Coffee Treatment.  Mark had everyone to be under strict control, something that proved very useful!

Our very good friend Micheline was with us.  Micheline lives in Brussels and regularly drives all the way to Beaumaris to her future home and amazes us all.

We seemed to get on board before anyone else so spent an amusing half hour circling around near B7 whilst the rest of NWVYC got out.  We were soon overtaken.

Going through the bridges,  the NWVYC dominated:

Going through the Swellies at something other than HW slack was not something we had done in Genesis, but with the big neaps proved unproblematic:

After that, we hoisted sails (1 reef in) and set sail:

It seemed as though there were NWVYC boats everywhere!

We seemed to lag behind at this point - heading for a shore with deep water while other boats sailed past.  We were last!  We noticed that some boats were tacking a very inefficient course - with one tack going back towards Beaumaris.

We went very close in to the shore, so tacking gave us a superb line up the Straits.  We overtook 5 boats in 5 minutes on the way to Plas Neuadd. 

#

Pretty soon we were on our own - but - then we were becalmed.  Normally, I would have given up and motored, but there was no point as we were in the lead (or so we thought).  So we took the opportunity to put the full 1000 sq.ft. of sail up and wait for some wind.  In the doldrums we watched the rest of the fleet turn up and *Stop*.

Just as Snowbird cruised to a halt next to us, a slight breeze emerged and we were off under full sail.

As we approached Plas Menai, we spotted another club boat - John Lomas on his new ride!  Somehow we managed to get closer to the wind than him and avoided tacking past the Plas Menai boats on the way to Caernarfon.  After that, we had more wind than we could comfortably deal with - getting over 7 knots past Victoria Dock, we put the sails away and contacted True Brit.

The plan was to anchor at Fort Belan until the tide was sufficient to go over the bar, so we headed for this little bay to await the others.  We dropped the anchor and for once settled nicely.  A little under an hour later, Snowbird turned up.  All the others seemed to be massing at Victoria Dock, and as the tide was turning severely against them, they remained visible only through binoculars for quite some time.

When the other boats got to Fort Belan to anchor, the tide was competing with the wind and the anchorage became tiresome - boats constantly riding over their anchor.  We were joined by Thurlwood who announced he was sailing towards us whilst hurtling the other way courtesy of the tide (Thurlwood would later on drag his anchor at Belan as well!).   One near miss was with Abraxas:

Abraxas at Anchor?

Thankfully the time came when we were due to pull the anchor out and head across the Bar:

Voyage across the Bar

We had to wait until gone 1630 for there to be enough water to cross.  We took a shortcut across the bar at C6 and headed straight for Llandwyn.  Plenty of water.

We anchored up in Mermaids Cove and settled down for a picnic in the cockpit:

Having a terrible time

We had a lot of lovely cheese, wine, fruit and cold wine on board so it was awful.

Later on, we all went ashore and had a barbeque:

Barbeque

Halfway through, we realised we had forgotten the lamb chops, so Carolyn elected to row back for them:

Getting the Chops

This was followed by a bonfire.  It wasn't particularly warm in the evening so we all huddled around it:

The BonFire

Next day was an absolute corker, I got up and took a picture and went back to bed:

Early Sunday

Next thing I knew was being awoken by my pager telling me to get down to the lifeboat station for a launch.  I didn't think I could make it so continued wallowing in bed, until we heard the lifeboat go past:

Lifeboat towing Hawkwind

Apparently they had been called out to Hawkwind, a club boat, who had engine trouble.

After a spell of chilling out, a couple of the boats elected to go for a walk.  We went for about an hour in one direction and then turned around:

A stroll down the beach

The weather was perfect, and when we got back the boats all looked very serene:

Genesis at Anchor in the pool at Mermaids Cove

Boats at anchor

We eventually decided to head off back over the bar to the Straits.  What wind there was, was directly behind us, so we rigged our patented gybe-be-gone system and set off with Hwyl Dda and Alfresco.  There were no advantages with having a larger boat with this little wind.

On the way, we encountered Snowbird who with their cruising chute comfortably out performed us:

Snowbird overtaking us

We just about crept ahead of Hwyl Dda, noticing that Malcolm had resorted to manual labour to hold the sail out:

Hwyl Dda

As we ghosted down the Straits, everything seemed perfect.  We even caught up with Snowbird (by cutting the corner), and overtook them:

Snowbird

We did have a couple of difficulties rolling in the foresail near the bridges, but nothing that wasn't solved - but we made a mental note to look at the roller reefing the following weekend before the Summer Cruise.

Lesson Learnt

Don't forget the lamb chops.  Although, they were surplus anyway!