We were in Carrickfergus and it was a particularly stormy day, When we have stormy days like this, it reminds me of a saying one of our friends from Liverpool used to say and that is
Anyone can go out to sea, but a wise sailor knows when to stay in.
Seeing as it was stormy outside the marine entrance Beverley added safety lines. These are there so that if the first line breaks for some reason there is a second line keeping you attached to the pontoon. While the storm was on our nylon safety lines were stretching like elastic bands. I have to say they really make life inside Salty Lass so much more comfortable.
The next day was much calmer, so we slipped the lines and got ready for sea. The previous day might well of been ridiculously blowy, but the day of departure was the opposite with not a breath of wind so we motored over to Bangor to get some fuel. I think of our engine as our get out of jail free card, but for that to be so then we need fuel, so I like to have plenty on-board. As we crossed by motor, a large tanker confused us by coming out of the channel early. We crossed the channel as quickly as possible so that we were out of his way, but then he left the channel, so that he was bearing down on us, so we had to increase our speed so that we crossed his bow, not ideal, but all we could do in the circumstances. In this particular case, he was the stand on vessel and as such he should not of changed course. We altered our course to avoid collision, but with him also altering course, we had to accelerate so that we avoided collision for a second time. I sometimes wonder if other people know their call regs. We try our best to make sure that we do but I'm afraid to say, that we see time and time again that other skippers do not know the rules.
After getting fuel at Bangor, we continued to the secret anchorage in Larne loch. We motored sailed as we went and we had a lot of heated discussions on board. We had a discussion on scope that did Beverley's head in. It was so bad, that Beverley's went cross eyed. We had a row on the pedantics of language when we took the sails down and I got tongue twisted more than once. Despite our rows we laughed a lot and that really helps us with being able to get on.
Once we arrived at the secret anchorage it was time to to put the anchor down. It took a while to get everything sorted but we did it. Once we were settled it was just a case of putting the anchor alarm on and settling down to a spot of tea.
Durring the night the anchor alarm went off, but that was caused by the fact that when we set the alarm, we were at one end of the range, but during the night we moved to the other end of the range. We soon saw that there was no reason to panic so we acknowledged the movement, but we went back to sleep.
While we were at the secret anchorage we worked and did our first training video. How that will work out we are not too sure but I had to retake my section three times because I went into school teacher mode. Other that that then we just wanted to thank our Ko-fi supporters who really help us with all sorts of bits and bobs for Salty Lass
