Back Across the Irish Sea - 53° 15" 19" N 05° 32' 56" W

We are heading back across the Irish Sea from Dún Laoghire to Caernarfon in Wales at night ... again!

So why are we doing these passages at night and not during the day, when you can see, it's warmer and you can get a proper night's sleep?

The answer is weather and tides.  

Victoria Marina is protected by a gate to keep a
minimum amount of water in the marina

We are heading to Victoria Dock in Caernarfon.  Because of the tidal range, the marina has a 'gate' that closes to ensure there is adequate water in the marina so the boats remain floating.  This means the gate opens only between High Water minus 3 hours to High Water plus three hours (HW ±3).  Except in the winter, October to March, the gate opens only during daylight hours.  

Which actually means working hours - 08:30 to 16:30!  So for the next few days, despite the the HW ±3 overlapping with daylight in the afternoon, the gate is only open in the morning from 08:30. 

"Big deal," I hear you say, "can't you just anchor up over night and go in the next morning?"  Yep, we could ... except we also have to consider the weather.  The Caernarfon entrance is tricky.  It is shallow with moving sand banks and a wicked tide.  It is recommended to enter only on HW ±3 and the bar can get very dangerous in a SW wind of greater than Force 4.  Force 4 on the Beaufort Scale is a moderate breeze of 13-18 kn (20-28km/hr).

We need to follow the pink dashed line following the channel markers -
Victoria Harbour is the pink 'yacht' in the top RH corner

And this is the issue.  The forecast for Thursday morning is a SW wind likely to exceed Force 4 with 19 kn (38km/hr) forecast and gusts up to 27kn (54km/hr). So we don't want to take the risk because we would then have to time the tides to work our way around the outside of Anglesea.  

The weather forecast for Thursday morning 

So we once again are heading out overnight to get into Caernarfon in time to enter the marina on the morning tide.  The upside is that is is forecast to be a lovely evening with a light breeze blowing us in the right direction!

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We had a glorious sail across. It was busy coming out of Dublin Bay in the dark with lots of flashing lights marking the channels and sand banks, dodging the Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) and the ships using it and we even had the landing lights from planes to confuse us even more! 

But we made it across safe and sound, negotiated the bar and made it in time to enter Victoria Dock.   We were entertained by Northern Lights and dolphins.  It doesn't get much better than that! 

The Aurora Borealis. Awesome colours but tricky to photograph from a rocking boat!

Dolphins leading us back to Wales

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