Blue Moon's trip around the UK

Sounds good doesn’t it? Linguistically speaking. A fine piece of alliteration. The reality is less delightful.

Keen/sad readers will remember that I went to bed moored off Piel Island looking forward to a nice sail up to Whitehaven, where I was planning to have a day off as I had been assured by a friend it was a beautiful, unspoiled, Georgian port town. I am trying to remember which friend it was so that I can have words.

That plan was looking more like necessity than indulgence by Tuesday night, as it was forecast to rain so hard on Wednesday evening that there were flood warnings, and of course rain like that usually brings more wind than needed, so I had already revised the passage plan from an evening arrival in pouring rain and howling gale to teatime in sunshine and – with luck – a nice Westerly breeze to fetch me up the coast, which would be just as well as to get there in time I would need to leave at 0500.

Then I woke up at 0100. Not unusual at my age, but a familiar-by-now little voice told me to look at the forecast since I was up. Ah – that wind and rain now looked set for lunchtime. And in my experience, when forecasts start coming forward like that they often don’t stop – coming forward, that is. It was a split-second no-brainer to fling on some clothes, make a cup of tea, drop the mooring and push the throttle to the floor. This latter move was a bit reckless, as it turns out that the tide from Barrow runs out rather fast, so I found myself doing 9 knots past the triffids, which were now just several among the thousand lights flashing and winking all around. It turns out that the illuminations aren’t confined to Blackpool: with the twisty channels and two huge wind farms the entrance to Morecambe Bay looked like Christmas in Oxford Street. I was very glad not to have to buoy-hop in the old way as they all seemed to flash the same.

I’d realised that the sparkling sail was another dream that had gone the way of all dreams as soon as I set off early, but motoring in the dark across a flat sea is one of yachting’s surprising delights in my view, and I finally got to see what I am fairly sure was Barrow-in-Furness, or at least its street lights, before we were off the very empty and probably rather beautiful Cumbrian coast. Not even a car on the coast road at that time in the night.

After a few hours the night dissolved – yes, you guessed – not into anything the least bit sparkling, but a grey murk that revealed not just the rugged coast and the fells beyond, but Sellafield.

Funny isn’t it that the word is so familiar and yet I had no idea of what it looked like. I assumed it would be horrid but this is spectacularly horrid – the picture never does justice but I was quite close in and could see miles of slag heaps, towering chimneys and huge buildings even uglier than a familiar Kentish power station. I guess it has to go somewhere (does it? discuss, with reference to UK energy strategy and the anti-nuclear movements of the early 1980s) but right on the edge of a national park? I suppose the thinking is that you can’t see it from the park, and it’s only passing yachtsmen who are offended (and presumably native Cumbrians, whose offence is mitigated by jobs). I began to yearn for the Blackpool Tower, and it was still only 0530.

Then the wind filled in, and – true to suspicion – it was earlier and more than forecast. And of course, on the nose. What the heck, I’ve been waiting eight months to do some sailing, and surely my early start means that I can afford to enjoy beating all the way to St Bee’s Head, then bear away and roar into the harbour? I set the sails and settled down onto a fun and quite fast close hauled course towards the Sellafield outfalls. Then I looked at the instruments, who have a thing which sailors will recognise and non-sailors will marvel at, called VMG.

VMG stands for Velocity Made Good, which is a wholly inappropriate term because it tends to show none of those things. Explanation for non-sailors: when you’re tacking into the wind, you may be going at (in this instance) over six knots, but because you’re zig-zagging your six knots is not taking you straight towards your destination but at angles to it. In the old days, working out your actual progress took hours of algebra involving tacking angles, leeway, boatspeed and so on, so few bothered. Today you just press a button and Gary or Raymond or one of the unnamed instrments spits out a single-figure metric that would make Ofsted jealous. The number will always be less than your speed of course, but the golden rule is that it is always far less than your most pessimistically-managed expectations. In this case (remember the six knots now!) … …. 2. Yes, two whole nautical miles per hour. Not a speed that fits with the word Velocity, and nothing Made Good about it at all, especially with storm clouds gathering. Explanation? Bad helming perhaps, but in my defence the tide had turned against me, the wind was droppping again, there was a nasty chop knocking me sideways, and even tacking to present a better angle out to sea produced gains so marginal they weren’t gains at all.

That was that. Ten minutes of sailing and the flappy white numbers were back where they belong, wrapped around spars, and I was back to motoring, now into 15 knots plus and a lumpy sea, because of course the wind had seen me furl the sails and responded accordingly. I was particularly cross about the tide, which was supposed to be with me all the way, but this is a coast few people sail, so I guess no-one bothered to update the chart. In desperation I headed for the beach, not so much because I wanted to swim or test my geiger counter, but because generally there is less tide there, and indeed there was. As a result also fewer nasty waves, and a bit more speed. So I settled down to another unexpectedly odd and very early morning, motoring past nuclear outfalls (including a thing on the seabed ominously labelled as a ‘current meter’, I suspect not tidal current given the innacuracy of the tidal atlas) and then deserted rocky beaches with names like Drigg and Long Man Scar which would sound great up a Lakeland fell but at sea level felt absolutely gloomy.

To my delight the beach strategy worked a treat: not only did it turn into a back-eddy (or perhaps the whole tide had turned, but I’ll take the credit for navigational cunning) but I got to admire the caravans at St Bee’s Head.

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So cunning was my plan that I actually arrived in Whitehaven Harbour before 1000. “You’ve just beaten the rain”, said the cheery lock-keeper, and he was very accurate: within a minute of tying up the heavens opened and it began to rain for all of the rest of Wednesday and – apparently – Thursday too. Very hard indeed. All the trains were cancelled – make your own joke there. The only silver lining was watching it fall on Rishi Sunak.

This would be a real shame and spoil my lazy day of sightseeing, were it not that (a) I was so tired after my early start that I went straight to bed and (b) there is no sightseeing to be done in Whitehaven, unless you want to visit the Rum museum (I hate rum and it looks to be a room at the back of a shop) or the Beacon museum which has an exhibition of (I think) Star Wars posters and another about Sellafield. I feel I can miss them both. Instead I head out for an evening exploring the fine craft ale and local produce in spite of the pouring rain. What a terrible mistake to leave the boat. I get soaked in the name of finding out that the recommended pubs are all closed because it’s Wednesday, so I have to choose between the Wetherspoons in the bus station or the promisingly named Whittington’s Cat, which promises local craft beer and might be interested to know that I come from where the cat turned round.

They weren’t, and the beer which once came from Cumbria is now brewed by Marston’s. There was no food other than crisps, and a lot of heavy metal. Outside the rain belted down, and the only people I saw in the half hour I sat in the window were a very large couple wearing ponchos and lycra shorts sharing a vape.

Whitehaven may technically be a Georgian port town, but it doesn’t look much like Falmouth or Weymouth or anywhere nice for that matter. It’s like a run down Cumbrian hill town dumped on the coast. A hurried walk back to the boat in the rain and now gale revealed that the pubs that weren’t shut on Wednesday were shut permanently, as were most of the shops. A branch of Milletts is never an indicator of exciting retail opportunities. And on my way back the wind blew my umbrella inside out, so for once I’m disappointed to see there isn’t even a Sports Direct, so I will have to go in to a Milletts for the first time in about 50 years.

The identity of that friend is coming back to me slowly, and being nearly local he should know better. If you’re reading, you know who you are, and can expect a call.

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