Round Britain for the RNLI Blog

Now I am here in Glenarm it is clear that there could be another extended wait for the weather to improve. OK, I could do as I have done at each stop until now… stay with the boat and be ready if there is a small weather window I can make use of. It has been a successful strategy until now because almost all of my legs so far have been in short weather windows between longer spells of bad weather. In a way, I was expecting some of that but I had hoped, no, expected, a few longer spells of settled weather being in June but not so.

So I am tired of waiting out the weather while living on the boat with limited space and resources and now that I am in Glenarm, nice though it is, it does not have any facilities in the village and so it would be even more difficult waiting out the weather here than at any other stop so far.

Surfing the web I see that Flybe are doing flights from Belfast to Exeter at very reasonable prices and I am afraid that I have succumbed to the need for a bit of a rest and a break from the boat for a short while. So tomorrow I will leave the boat safely in Glenarm and return home to recharge my batteries and sleep in a real bed for a few nights. Of course, I will be keeping a beady eye on the weather and should a better spell show up then I can be on the flight the next day (flights are seldom full apparently) and be on the next leg the day after that so I won’t miss out on any good weather.

I would ask you not to look on this as a break in the principles of the trip. Yes, I want to see if it is a sensible expectation to take my little boat Round Britain but I do not believe that I should have to live on the boat continuously for weeks on end when weather bound. I will stick to my principle of only sleeping on the boat when on route but after such a long spell of continuously bad weather I need a break if I am to continue on.

I will post from home on my thoughts on the weather and also report on what I am up to whilst there so please continue to look in… it won’t be long before I am on my way again and you wouldn’t want to miss it now would you?

Today has been a bit of an unscheduled trip just 25 miles up the Northern Ireland coast to Glenarm… the first of the Glens of Antrim!

The original plan was to leave Bangor at 4am to get the tide north up to Port Askaig but as it seems to have been for ages now, I woke to a F4-5 and a forecast of F6-7! Clearly a no go so I went back to bed!!!

On waking the second time it was clearly OK for a jaunt up the coast and so I decided to get myself a little nearer my goal by going for Glenarm… it is not in the almanacs yet but one of the Bangor lifeboat crew mentioned it as a good stopping point while waiting to cross the North Channel. So I refuelled and paid my berthing bill… Although Bangor Marina did give me 3 free days berthing it was always possible that I would need to stay longer because of weather but in spite of the weather making my departure impossible they could not see themselves to extending the free berthing offer and I had to pay for the additional days… which is strange as there was plenty of vacant spaces!

MOB Guardian on, SeaMe on, route loaded and set to navigate… OH! No route in the chartplotter! I did the route on the PC and converted it to Lowrance and … ah! I must have forgotten to put it on the memory card. I am now on my way out of the marina so shall I turn back or load it from the PC outside the marina? The sea was almost flat and there was no one else around so I put the boat in a safe place, put it into neutral and fired up the PC. It only took a moment to copy the file to the SD card but it seemed like an age. This is most unlike me. Being a pilot I am well used to preparation tasks like this and I completely forgot it! Still, no harm done and the correct route was loaded and I was on my way.

It wasn’t a pretty sight outside the marina though. Ok, the sea was quite flat and planeing was easy but the vis was probably about 2 miles and it was raining hard. I was going north and the wind was southwesterly so running with the wind made it an easy and quick passage at 18kts but soon the sea got up and I was back down to 14kts and it was obvious that the sea would not have been good for a passage to Port Askaig. As I headed for Glenarm it appeared out of the mist and I made my way into the harbour.

The super harbourmaster here in Glenarm has made me very welcome and tucked Stargate in a corner of the marina where she will be safe.

So I am here. It is a small and very pretty harbour in the older style (walled) but the Larne Council have put pontoons in and it is now a great stopping place when making journeys to and from Northern Ireland from the mainland. Mind you, I don’t think the harbour people would mind when I say that there isn’t much here except a beautiful little village and shelter for the boat. There is no fuel, shops or restaurants but there are the essentials… several pubs!

I am looking at the weather for the coming week. That does not make for a pretty sight either. The low pressure systems out to the west seem to be destined to hang around for several days and are not forecast to move until the end of the week.

Paul is tucked up in Glenarm Marina near Ballymena. Looking at the pressure charts and forecasts he thinks it unlikely that he will be able to go any further until at least next weekend.

You may remember me talking about going to visit a local theatre group with a view to joining it and getting into my acting again. Well, I actually made it there last night. The Tamaritans have their own premises just off Plymouth’s Union Street, and they are in their 3rd week of rehearsals for "The Price" by Arthur Miller. I was made to feel immensely welcome by everyone there and I have no doubt of some happy times acting with them in the future.

Meanwhile the decorations are now complete and Ed returns on Monday to finish off the various jobs he is doing for us. The new carpet fitting is now booked for 7th July, which hopefully will signal the end of house improvements - at least for now!

I have woken to a F3-4 in the marina which is certainly stronger outside and so I am not very hopeful to make it to Port Askaig today. However, I am leaving Bangor today and if it does not look good then I will nip into Glenarm Marina… a little known marina in an old harbour some 20nm north of Belfast Loch. I will be safe there until a crossing of the North Channel is possible.

I don’t like going to sea when there are F5s in the forecast and the sea forecast is Moderate on the inshore forecast but slight and F3-4 almost everywhere else. Basically they don’t know and the computer models suggest it could go either way. Happy Days!

Once at Glenarm I will have a better shot at crossing in the next few days if there is a window.