Belfast has been my most significant destination ever since leaving Itchenor, as I have a flight home booked (back in the days when I was hoiping to spend Sunday afternoon celebrating in N5), and I’m delighted and slightly surprised at myself for having arrived a day early. Belfast’s also been a significant destination in other ways too: I’m ashamed to say it’s by far the biggest city in the UK that I have never visited (blame the clients commissioning market research, even the government).
You get an inkling of this as you sail up Belfast Lough from Bangor – past Cultra and Hollywood the houses get bigger and grander until you could almost be looking at the other Hollywood if you forget the temperature and that these Hollywood Hills are dark green. Then there is the not-so-small matter of Belfast being a pretty major port, and they take that bit rather seriously too. Yachts are welcome (indeed the city centre marina is owned by the Harbour Authority) but you play by the rules as if you were a fully loaded tanker. I call up as instructed when entering the harbour limit about an hour away from the entrance, and in my best VHF-ese give my position, size, destination and request permission to proceed. This is usually treated with a completely casual response (even at Dover – once “yeah, I got you, carry on mate”) but not here. “Blue Moon, that information is all copied, you have permission to proceed to No 12 where you will call again and may obtain permission to enter the channel on my authority subject to shipping movements.”
My word. But I have to admit to rather liking this, it’s playing with the
big boys. I will never forget listening to a huge ferry being told (casually but firmly) that he could only enter Dover harbour after me. And indeed when I call again as instructed and am allowed in, I’m warned that I am to monitor Channel 12 at all times, that the ferry on Pier 2 is leaving in ten minutes and am reminded that I am not to obstruct commercial shipping. This is actually helpful and means I don’t then have palpitations when the channel is suddenly full of Stena’s finest: I have already heard him inform Port Control that he is ready to leave and in return he’s been told that there is a pleasure craft entering and that I am currently at beacon 13.
But I am totally dwarfed by the big boys I am playing with. This isn’t like Portsmouth where the Navy and the ferries are tucked away round the corner, I am motoring slap bang through the middle of one of the biggest ports in the UK. There are Samson and Goliath in the old Harland & Wolfe yard on my left and huge tankers 50 metres on my right. I am worried about taking photos in case I am being monitored for poor seamanship.
I turn into Abercorn Basin where the marina is situated in the newly developed Titanic Quarter (I later discover the marina basin is where H&W used to launch ships a bit smaller than TItanic, but still rather bigger than Blue Moon) feeling dwarfed now not by ships but by the Canary-Wharf-esque buildings around me, and thinking this is where my journey through welcoming NI gets paused for the Big City.
But no, no sooner have I tied up than both the marina’s employees have come down from the office to welcome me in. They introduce themselves as Joe and Kayleigh, and although Joe turns out to be disappointingly English he has caught the Irish welcome bug if not the accent, since they are both on the pontoon chatting away for a good ten minutes telling me all about the marina, the city and (of course) where I will find the best Guinness, accompanied this time (it being Belfast) not so much by oysters but live music and good craic. “Oh yes,” says Kayleigh when I tell them about the different welcome from Port Control, “that’s Richard. He likes things done proper.” The marina being owned by the harbour, they are all in one building. Joe and Kayleigh are keen to stress the rules: they were once hauled over the coals at the water cooler when one of their customers left with his VHF switched off and went sightseeing down the harbour at two knots, unaware of the ferry and tanker queuing up behind him.
The marina is a fascinating pot pourri of cruising types: there are not one but two yachts with world-girdling Americans, some crusty liveaboards, an Airbnb houseboat, visiting Scots and Manx, and the man next door who lives in the penthouse opposite and comes down to sit on his boat of an evening (it takes an hour to get out to the Lough so he mainly doesn’t). Everyone is very jolly, even the ones who aren’t Irish, and everyone wants to know where I’m from and where I’m going, and in this proper cruising company I feel a bit dwarfed again.
I set out to have a look around and I’m torn between comparing the city with Liverpool and Chatham. Liverpool because of the very grand ‘you’re in a Big City now, sailor boy’ waterfront (although a lot of the buildings are actually new and a bit more like suburban Dallas) and Chatham because of the ‘what shall we do now we don’t build ships?’ dilemma. I have to say, although loyally delighted at Chatham’s slow but ultimately successful survival story, Belfast seems to have seen the demise of the yards coming and reacted more swiftly. Mind you, if only James Cameron had decided to make a blockbuster about HMS Victory, and Portsmouth hadn’t already nicked it, perhaps Chatham would have the Victory Quarter and the Maritime Mile and all the tourists. But although the 1970s desire to build motorways through every big city hasn’t done Belfast any favours, by and large the new and the old rub shoulders very well, and the old is clearly deliberately big and designed to make a statement that it’s up there with Liverpool and Manchester and Newcastle and of course Dublin, and looking around I suspect that while Dublin was singing and writing poetry, Belfast was doing the heavy lifting. Every public building is as big as it possibly can be, which means that although many are now shops or hotels or very cool restaurants, it feels like an older and perhaps more European city than Liverpool or Manchester or Newcastle. I’ll leave Dublin out of that comparison.
For such a self-consciously Big City, it really is peculiar to find that apparently the most-used word is ‘wee’. Within five minutes of arrival I’ve been invited to plug my shorepower into the wee socket, which appears to be a completely standard size, and to use the wee showers, which are actually much larger than most. The café on the square opposite offers a wee coffee, which seems like an odd marketing strategy given that it’s the same price as a normal one. My best example after half a day is the woman in front of me in Boots who asked the person on the till “would you look after my wee receipt for me now?” This was odd – she had only bought a bottle of shampoo, so the receipt was indeed small, so why would you want the shop assistant to keep it safe? And what disregard for customer service when as soon as the woman’s back was turned, the assistant threw it away?
I have since discovered that ‘wee’ is actually a sort of civic badge and not intended to mean anything, but it fits with a pattern of disorientation that I am finding quite confusing but thoroughly enjoyable. On the one hand, I am back in a big city, in the United Kingdom (statement of fact, nothing more) where the signs are only in English (for the first time since leaving Devon) and I can use my stamps to post cards home, but on the other I am most firmly still in Ireland, where the pubs sell Guinness and Red Ale and are silly colours, the people are loud and friendly, there is a church on every corner and I stick out like a sore thumb as soon as I open my mouth. The Americans are off on a self-guided Troubles Tour. I briefly consider doing the same and then decide that I’ve seen the film and can watch the series on iPlayer. I feel I should, but I only have an afternoon and I like today’s Belfast too much to go and spoil it.
The flight back to London feels more epic than the train from Swansea but it is quicker and cheaper. It does have the inevitable effect of putting any Big CIty musings into context though.
Readers for whom this blog has become an essential part of daily life should seek professional help, and fast, because next week I have a boat full of guests and it would be rude to leave them drifting onto rocks while I am down below tapping away on my computer.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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