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Leg 8a Bangor to Glenarm - A short trip that gets me 25 miles nearer…
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.
