A foggy day
John Pearson and myself decided to spend a day doing some maintenance work on Sea Ghost. The weather was however still glorious and it made more sense to do a bit of sailing and then see if there was still time to do some work. Like Cinderella, we had to be back before 14:00. Not that the boat would change into a pumpkin but if we missed the gate, we would have to wait until 19:00 before there would be enough water to return.
Conwy harbour
We arrived at the Conwy jetty just in time to catch the harbour launch to take us out to the mooring. The service is steeply priced these days at &po4 per person. It was however a quick way to get to the boat. We took Sea Ghost to the dock side to load our stuff on board. I think this is where I let the outboard flood and we spent the next hour sweating to get the engine going again.
At around 11:15 she decided to give us a break and we motored out to Perch after which the sails were raised. There was a force NE 3 wind, which took us out through the buoyed channel. As we were not totally sure the engine would ever start again if we turned it off, we left it on standby. There wasn't enough wind to carry us against the tide.
Conwy castle
We made about 2 kts towards Fairway which we approached around 12:30. Just as we closed her she disappeared in a dense fog bank. So did we.
No props, the GPS had rather pointlessly indicated the way up to fairway, so she would now point us back. Having walked so many times in the clouds in the Welsh mountains, I was rather surprised that on the sea there is absolutely no reference at all. In the mountains you might not know exactly where you are heading, but at least you can do it in a relative straight line.
By now I realised that I had left the ships compass at home as it needed replacing.
The GPS kept indicating a port turn was needed and I was under the distinct impression we were going round in circles of about a 100 yards. When the buoy C2 appeared to be moving faster than us, the going round in circles feeling was luckily replaced for a feeling that we were closing Ireland.
C2 appeared to be on lunch break and I set the GPS for C1 which probably turned up around 12:45 except it had no markings. My watch compass indicated that we were roughly going in the right direction and at 13:00 C4 came finally into view, restoring my belief in America's military superiority.
From there on we revved the engine to make up for lost time as Conwy sands started to appear on port. The engine fought bravely against the current just doing about 3 kts (SOG). At 13:50 we moored up and we spent the rest of the afternoon sanding and painting.
Sea Ghost dried out at around LW-1 and John and I walked across the bank dragging the dinghy with us to row the last 150 yards back to Conwy jetty.