Day 14 - To St David's and beyond

Sailing past Grassholm island

Looking at another dodgy wind forecast

Customs and excise at Fishguard

 According to the carefully made passage plan, we needed to be up a dawn and under way as soon as possible. We'd be fighting the tide to get out of Milford Haven and as long as we had enough wind to get to St Agnes's had by 0800 we had a good shout at getting through the awkward tidal overfalls around Skomer island. There is a shortcut passage in between Skomer and the mainland which we shied away from as it would have may short tacking up a very narrow channel in several lots of tide. Taking fewer, longer tacks around the outside seemed to be the way to go. If the wind died we could come back and overnight in Dale... Although that looked to become more than one night if I did happen.

Again if the wind died once we had got past Skomer we could then head for Solva. If the opposite happended we could go right round.

As it turned out, the wind did ok an shifted slightly to the left which helped us to hit our targets ahead of time. We spotted our first puffins off Skomer too. 

Once round St David's, we soon found ourselves plugging into increasing tide with a decreasing breeze. Rounding Strumble Head was painfully slow as was the fetch into Fishguard. Once the wind god's realized we were going to reach Fishguard, they relented and gave us a nice F3 spinnaker run into the harbour.

We landed on the stretch of sand by the ferry terminal where we were met by a delightful chap called Roger. Roger's claim to fame, it seems, is that he is one of not many people to hae put Stick Daring into a shower. Roger suggested that we move over to the Old Harbour and he rang the harbour master and got this organised for us.

The forecast for the next day looks poor again. We are now considering the wisdom of continuing the trip. Even Anglesey looks a long way off right now.

Review forecasts in the morning.