Some days turn out better than expected, and through careful expectation management (aka total pessimism) this occasionally happens to me when I’m sailing. Yesterday was such a day.
The plan was largely based around taking the chance to visit Charlie, who now lives on Anglesey, since it seemed rude simply to sail past and wave, and also because it is a lot cheaper than taking the train from Euston. Also quicker, if you start from Conwy. Cemaes is the nearest village to Charlie, which gives its name to a bay which, according to the pilot books, is well sheltered in southerly winds. This seemed ideal, and astonishingly a very light southerly was forecast for the next 24 hours,, although the pessimist in me managed to spot the caution that in any wind from the East a swell sometimes bends all the way around the headland into the village bay. This looked improbable on the chart, and irrelevant given the forecast, so the plan was made to meet up for ice cream and chips on the beach. I could anchor in the bay, row ashore for ice cream, and head round to Holyhead on the first of the tide tomorrow and tie up on the walk-ashore pontoon for a picnic.
Things started well enough, although the gusts of 18 knots coming down the slopes behind Conwy made me question the forecast, but it quickly dropped to spinnakerable numbers so a second morning of big pink kite action unfolded: sun out, 12 knots, broad reach. Puffin Island to leeward, and beyond it the shores of Ynys Môn, as the Welsh speakers amongst the readership of the multi-award-winning blog will recognise as Anglesey.
Anglesey is famous for quite a few things, but I will only mention the most favourable. Last outpost of the Druids, most Welsh-speaking part of Wales, most haunted place in the UK, birthplace of the Land Rover are only the most obvious. It is also quite famous for having one of the least hospitable coastlines, being fringed by rocky cliffs, rocky bays and shallow sandy beaches with rocks on them. Better for coasteering than yachting, and the North Coast in particular gets a fair dollop of caution in the pilot books, on account of fearsome tides, offshore rocks and exposed headlands, such that most recommend going through the just moderately-terrifying Swellies instead, where, as Roger and I discovered 18 months ago, the rocks have sticks on them and the villages are towns where they have Michelin and Waitrose and everybody speaks English. And, indeed, for the most part, is English.
This is not the coast that Charlie lives near. His coast is rugged, wind-swept and rock-strewn and instead of Waitrose they have Wylfa nuclear power station to look at it, or at least the remains of it, and a service station for a corner shop. There is a safe harbour at Amlwch, but getting on and off the boat would involve long muddy ladders and the ice creams are a mile away and from Walls, so that was ruled out in favour of Cemaes, where the ice creams are hand made in the village and have won even more awards than the blog.
Unfortunately, Cemaes did not deliver. Having avoided the nasty-looking overfalls off Point Lynas, the top right corner of Anglesey, and rounding it with the spinnaker up in blazing sunshine (showing off again), as soon as I did so the wind dropped to around three knots, about the same speed as the tide. This had the effect that sailors will recognise of reducing the wind the sails feel (called, plainly enough for once, Apparent Wind) to exactly zero. Spinnaker down, engine on; I looked up from these exertions and it was as if I had fallen asleep and woken up again on another day where it was wet, cold, cloudy and windy. Disappointing, but by now the three-knot tide had more or less pushed me to Cemaes Bay past two of the three current holders of second place in the UK’s ‘silly rock name’ competition (behind The Scares, if you remember Another day, another Mull): East Mouse, West Mouse and – wait for it – Middle Mouse. None of them even vaguely mouselike.
Into Cemaes Bay, where only a few weeks before I had sat outside the pub-hotel with Charlie eating burgers in blazing sunshine, thinking how much I was looking forward to sailing into it. Now I wasn’t: the whole place was dark, gloomy and looked rather forbidding. I crept into Village Bay in the corner, which should have been the most sheltered. It was even shallower than the very skimpy charts suggested, and fringed with rocks. I tried to muster some lift-keel courage but found it quite hard on my second sailing day of the year. I pulled the keel up half way and still touched the sand before the echo sounder said I should. I pulled it all the way up and dropped the anchor, realising I could not only see the bottom but walk on it without getting wet much above my waist. It would have been an attractive prospect to beach the boat and walk ashore to eat ice creams were it not for (a) the grey clouds scudding overhead, (b) the steady drizzle blowing down the hills in the (c) 16 knot easterly wind that had appeared and caused the (d) heavy swell to bend 180 degrees around the headland into the bay just as the pilot had warned, making the boat roll violently, made worse by having no keel. I now saw that the advice about the bay being good in a southerly was that precise.
People on the beach (they were walking dogs in wellies and anoraks, not lounging in deck chairs eating ice creams) began pointing at me and I could swear I could hear laughter. The boat lurched again. I called the staff at Charlie’s place. He was pretending to be asleep and muttering about me bringing him a pizza at home instead. I saw that the tide would turn against me at Carmel Head in half an hour, and made a decision. I would call his bluff, and go and tie onto the very shabby but very sheltered pontoon in Holyhead. Motoring out of Cemaes Bay I spotted a yacht anchored in the supposedly more sheltered cove (underneath Anglesey’s oldest church, if you’re interested), rolling violently. Out of the bay and instantly the sun came out again and the wind dropped.
Now the scary three-knot tide was my friend, as it hurled me past another Mouse towards the maze of rocks off Carmel Head, the top left corner of Anglesey. But not to worry: I had done my research (largely because I was so scared reading about this coast) and hugged the shoreline which not only kept me off the rocks and out of the overfalls, but also gave a grandstand view of the coast I had walked around on Boxing Day…
…of the cottage we spent Christmas in…
…and of Church Bay with the supposedly brilliant pub on the hill, which stays supposedly as we didn’t get to go to it because it was shut.
Gloom and despair had turned to great success in an instant. The tide swept me round into Holyhead Bay and I was tied up on the sad but very convenient old pontoon a couple of hours after leaving Cemaes. I had had a rather enjoyable “tour of Anglesey” (for those still wondering about the title of this post). All except for about half an hour.
One of Charlie’s lovely support team came to get me, we picked up pizza in Valley (yes, it’s the name of a place, not a geographical feature. It has an RAF base and a railway station where you have to hold your hand out to stop the train. Really.) and were tucking in by teatime.
Back at the so-called marina, the yacht that had anchored in Cemaes Bay had tied up opposite me. “We just stopped for lunch,” said the skipper, “but everyone felt sick. I was never going to spend the night there!”.
I slept like a baby tied onto a pontoon in the most sheltered corner of Holyhead harbour., The wind stayed in the south for another hour, then swung back round into the east and picked up again. I rolled over in my bunk and patted myself on the back. Metaphorically, of course. It would be impossible in a sleeping bag.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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