Day 17 - Wet wet wet

5.30ish we dropped the mooring 

A lovely calm departure. Everyone else seems to still be in bed. 

Holyhead harbour after a bit of a lively trip. 

Nigel came to get us and our gear to shore. 

 Had to use the phone alarms to get ourselves or of the sleeping bags at 0400. Managed to feed ourselves and strike camp in the record time of two hours and got ourselves under way at 0600 exactly as planned.

Getting out of the anchorage was about of a drift until we got out of the shelter of the hills and into the forecast SW breeze.

The spinnaker went up as soon as it was safe to do so and ... This is the joy of long distance sailing ....the spinnaker stayed up, on the same tack until past lunchtime. It great not having a leeward mark to spoil things.

Breeze started off as about a F3 and gently built throughout the day. We made very good speed in spite of the rather confused and choppy wave conditions doing what they could to spoil things.. more on this in a later posting.

The forecast was for the wind to veer as the day went on meaning that we would probably have to drop the spinnaker in order to be able to lay the passage inside Bardsey Island. As it was this didn't happen and we found ourselves going around the outside of the island instead, staying well off to avoid the tidal overfalls. By this time the tide had turned into our favour and this did ease the seas just a little bit.

Up to this point we had been thundering along making low teens boat speed through the water albeit against a strong tide. We reached Bardsey before 11:00...nearly two hours ahead of schedule. The ride was fast but very very wet and uncomfortable with the boat constantly being bounced by the awkward chop and spray being thrown in all directions , but mostly down the back of my neck. 

Once the spray is regularly reaching the blue line across the middle of the main, you know that things are getting a bit more lary thanks really safe, so the spinnaker went back into its bag not long after Bardsey and we settled to some slightly less hectic two-sail vmg downwind sailing (still on port gybe)

Eventually the Holyhead light came into view at around the same time that a nasty looking thunderstorm started building to our weather. This storm looked really nasty. The clouds all had very sharp edges and promised to bring nasty squall with it. The previous day I'd been reading a Facebook posting from Rob, a sailing mate, showing the anemometer trace from somewhere in Chichester harbour when a thunderstorm went through... It showed 50kt windspeeds at one point! Call me chicken, but my first reaction was to gybe off and leg it out of there as fast as possible. It soon became obvious that we simply weren't getting away fast enough so we decided to drop a reef in the main while we still could. Maybe Ron's post was getting to me and maybe with the sky going dark I was feeling about more nervous about this shower but we decided to wimp out completely and get the main off altogether. 

Once the squall hit, it was, thankfully, nowhere near the 50kts feared. Less than half that, I'd reckon. We tonked along nicely for a while with just the jib and feeling quite safe heading for where the Holyhead light used to be before it disappeared. It was probably only about twenty minutes later that the rain passed and the wind died down to a mere F3. Not enough for just the jib. So the main went back up again. It's always been a struggle to get the main up on this boat and in the end we cheated and only got it up as far as the second reef. No worries, the second reef went in and we were off again in what was probably a bit more than just a F3. As the wind dropped further we added to the sail area by setting the spinnaker and this got us eventually in to to entrance to Holyhead harbour.

Not really sure where we could go we beat up to the very end of the wall and found a vacant mooring to hang on to. Within a short while we had an army of supporters from the Peters family descending on us with threats of food, real beds and dry clothing. Nigel Dennis turned up with a rib and gave us and our bags a lift to shore and we are soon established in a very nice house getting to grips with an excellent spag bol'.

A terrific day on the water covering over 80miles.