Today (yesterday actually, but surely you can write a blog in the present?) was a turning point in several ways. I’ve sailed from Milford Haven back to Itchenor a couple of times, so sailing to it was different but not exactly totally new. But today (see above) was new: I have sailed at Fishguard before many years ago but never sailed to it, and to get there (here, actually, see above) you have to go around Wales’ Southwestern corner: St Anne’s Head and St David’s Head. That would be different enough but the exciting thing is that while doing this you also have to negotiate two Sounds: narrow stretches of water between two bits of land, in this case Jack Sound and Ramsey Sound.
These two cheery-sounding places are anything but, and command whole pages in pilot books because (a) they are surrounded by and filled with a whole load of crazily-named rocks, (b) the tide runs through them so fast that you can’t sail against it and even if you sail with it you can easily get swept onto aforemnetioned rocks and (c) the passages between the rocks are ridiculously narrow – 100 metres in places. We don’t have things like this on the East Coast or the Solent, or indeed anywhere I have been before, which explains the excitement tinged with a bit of fear.
The key to success and long life is to read the pilot book carefully: it tells you when the tide is slack as it turns, which is pretty much the only safe time to go through. Usually it does this with reference to High Water Dover which is a bit like the Greenwich Meridian for tides. So I did, and worked out that I needed to be at the entrance to the first sound (Jack) at 1330. It did then go on to say that this gave you time to cover the seven miles to Ramsey Sound to arrive at slack water there (at 1600 today). It did occur to me that this allowed for a speed of around 3 knots but I thought he was either being cautious or had a very slow boat.
It was cold, grey, and a bit windier than I fancied for my first Sound Adventure, but nothing daunted I cleverly timed my arrival for 1325 – what difference would five minutes make? I thought it was a little odd that the yacht ahead of me turned around and beat back but perhaps they were just having a day out looking at the wildlife on Skomer Island. As I got myself into position next to the evil-sounding Blackstones Rock and lined up my bearings, I couldn’t help but notice how much white water seemed to be ahead of me, but certain of my own pilotage skills I pressed on. Surely as the tide went slack the waves would die down – in about five minutes by my calculation.
They didn’t. They got bigger, and then I heard the noise. But by then I was in, and the roaring got louder as half the Irish Sea tried to squeeze itself through a rock-strewn gap about 500 metres wide. With me in the middle of it. The waves weren’t that high, about four feet, but that was enough to make steering quite a challenge and when I thought about the rocks it was a bit scarier than planned. Once I made the mistake of looking behind and there was a breaking wave staring right at me. Seconds later it had the boat and I was surfing down it like a dinghy with a slight concern that we’d keep on going (‘down the mine’ in sailing parlance, not a nice thought in these circs). Never mind, at least at this speed I’d be through in a minute or two. We were doing nine knots!
Then I looked at the speed over the ground. Three. One when not surfing crazily down a steep wave. The tide was running against me at six knots. It took a full half an hour to go the half mile from one end to the other. And the tide never even went slack, let alone turn in my favour. What was going on?
The astute (and/or cynical) will have guessed, but it took me a while, mainly because I had to have a bit of a lie down and a change of pants after I was through. I got the wretched pilot book out primarily to shout at it but also to double check the timings for the next sound, and that was when I realised I had failed to add 3.5 and 11 correctly. I had arrived a whole hour (and those five minutes) early. What an idiot. I was lucky it wasn’t worse, but at least I had spotted the problem, and had a tale to tell when I arrived in Fishguard.
I stooged around St Bride’s Bay looking at anchored tankers until it was the (triple checked) time to enter Ramsey Sound and it was flat as a pancake without a hint of tide. The sun came out, I put up the spinnaker and all was well again.
On a moment’s reflection though I would rather not have had the story to tell. But I am in Fishguard, in Cardigan Bay, and it feels like a really very long way from home, which is after all the point of all this.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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