Helen Georgina Cain

a beautiful sunny day with moderate to light wnw wind. An hour after low water we sailed towards North Stack picking up the eddie in the bays, sailing closer than normal to the shore. Having got some great views of North Stack fog signal station we turned and sailed towards Langdon Ridge, giving our novice crew, Ewan, a chance to helm on a broad reach. From there we gybed to return to the New Harbour. We had to motor sail in the lower wind conditions to clear the TSZ, but stopped the motor and sailed onto the mooring.

A great day for a sail with the remains of the ebb tide around North Stack. Choppy through the overfalls south of South Stack then a quiet sail into Treaddur bay. No time to anchor so we turned and sailed back, the overfalls were quite rough with the westerly wind over the area close to the coastline. Once round the stacks it flattened out for an easy passage back to the New Harbour.

NNE F3 and rain as we left the mooring but soon after clearing the Breakwater the clouds started lifting. As we neared Langdon Ridge the sun could be felt warming the air as the drizzle stopped. With the wind backing we had a great sail to our leading line into the Skerries, welcomed by a group of seals resting on the entrance rocks. Once in the lagoon we moored on the buoy in perfect time for lunch. After lunch we stayed watching the seals for a while before casting off and motoring out of the lagoon. By now the ebb tide was flowing quickly but the sea conditions were unusually flat. After raising the main and unfurling the jib we had a wonderful reach all the way to Clipera with a dead run across to the New Harbour and then onto our mooring.

As arranged all the yachts split away from St George's Pier at 06:15 to go through the Swellies at Slack Water. In perfectly flat conditions we all motored through the Swellies and as the wind didn’t fill in as hoped we continued to motor towards Caernafon Bar C1 buoy. At 09:53:00 the wind had reached approximately 4kt from the NNE while our SOG was 3.0kt which allowed us to start the race. The winds continued to be light variable but we hugged the coastline to gain benefit from the eddies in the bays as the ebb tide continued to push the other yachts backwards as they had stayed out to the West. The winds picked up several times as we continued to concentrate on maximising our VMG to the next waypoint; finally filling in as we passed Aberfraw and from here on we had nice consistent winds but with the wind with tide both against us we made 31 tacks and 1 gybe on Sunday! As we approached South Stack we put in a couple of tacks to get closer into Abraham’s Bosom with Twr Helen glowing white in the bright sunshine. Conditions around the stack got a bit choppy with wind against tide but by no means the worst! We arrived at the finish at 15:40:40, back to the mooring and a clear up before a sit down and a pannad before catching the launch to go ashore.

CHPSC [Clwb Hywlio Pwllheli Sailing Club] Winter race series, race 2 winds light SSW racing round the cans.

Very rapid trip from Holyhead to Pwllheli. winds 24kt gusting 29 with very confused wave patterns. Arrived early at Bardsey Sound taking advantage of the ebb tide assisting us onward in nice flatter seas on the south side of the Lleyn Peninsula. Too early for tide access to Pwllheli estuary so anchored up untill around 18:30 when we hope to carry on up to the pontoons.