Day 13 - Three Anchors!

Feet at Angle Bay in Milford Haven

Angle Bay pre departure mooring

Milford Haven scenery

More Milford Haven scenery

 With the boat moored stern-to I was able to clearly see the shore from my sleeping bag and, no doubt, the dog walking population of Angle were also able to glimpse the delights contained within our little green tent.

I woke up to see Uncle Albert from only Fools and Horses peering into the tent. He obviously wasn't too impressed by what we saw and he went on his way.

It was shortly after that when the tide rose just enough to pop our new anchor out of the weeds that had held it all night and for us to start heading for the concrete.

Pre-breakfast paddling is not a sport that I recommend. Uncle Albert turned up again for a chat in the middle of it all but quickly grasped what was going on and disappeared again. When we had at least made the boa secure Inthe shore, uncle Albert reappeared with a big anchor, some warp and a rubber dinghy. He leaped in, paddled off some way, dropped in an anchor that would have held the Queen Mary and presented us with the line. Tied off and safe we were able to be properly introduced to Uncle Albert.

It turned out that we had dropped back in time right into the middle of feudal Britain. Frank, as he should properly be called, was the official boatman to the Squire of the Angle Estate which consisted of pretty much the entire peninsular, apart from the bit that had been sold to the gas refinery.

Frank is also a gent of the highest class himself -  in the real sense, I mean. He furnished us with an old CQR anchor he had kicking about to take onwards as a massive improvement on the Bude grapnel. He also lent us his tender for the day which meant that we were able to see some of the sights of this quirky, pretty little corner of Wales.

Mention must now be made of the bacon and sausage rolls provided by the most excellent cafe that is at West Angle beach.

The next day's forecast looked a little too light for comfort but with the following day looking even lighter we felt we needed to make an early start and try and at least make Silva and to keep things progressing.

We had the benefit of lots of advice from local sailor Bernard Jonker who also lent us his mooring so that we would be able to get away bright and early.

The passage plan had lots of bale-outs if the wind did fail and a ridiculously over-optimistic ultimate goal of reaching Fishguard.

Early night and see how it would go.....