We had come to Conwy Marina because our speed logger was not working. So Roland marine put in a working logger and tried that. This proved that the head was working fine, it just was not talking to our speed logger. So next he re-terminated the wires, so that they had good connections. Unfortunately this did not solve the issue, so next he measured our speed logger so that they could recommend a new logger to replace it. It would of been good to have a working speed logger but it is not essential like the depth gauge. It will be a while before we get the speed logger sorted, but we will do it will just be some time in the future.
Once the speed logger was done, it was time to put on our life jackets and go. It was such a calm day that we actually slipped all the lines, from the pontoon. This meant that all I needed to worry about was fending ourselves off the boat next door, so that was what I did while Beverley took us out of the slip.
Once out and away from the channel, then the sails were up. We still love sailing and we love it when the boat is quiet. This does mean that we put the propeller in reverse. This reduces the speed that you can go by 0.5knots, but we love the silence. To be out on the water sailing is just fantastic. We still had the autopilot making a squeak but we can live with that. While we had full sail up I went forward, just to admire them.
While we were sailing we discussed the temperature inversion that we could see.
Temperature Inversion
Generally the air gets colder as it gets higher, but occasionally an area of warm air can move in. Now as the cold air rises it gets trapped by the warmer air. We could see this because we could see a mist coming off the sea and then just stopping as it reached the warm air. These temperature inversions are what cause smog, as the pollution is trapped, just like the mist that we could see was trapped. These temperature inversions have a nasty habit of messing with the wind as you can have different wind directions above the inversion and below the inversion layer.
Motoring
We did our little best using the light winds that we were picking up to sail the boat, but once the wind drops to below 10 knots then we are really struggling and the motor comes out just so that we can do the passage. While we were motoring all of a sudden Salty Lass gave a shudder and we wondered what it was, so we put the camera under Salty Lass to discover weed all around the prop. This meant that we had to put Salty Lass in reverse for a little bit to remove the weed. Once that was done we continued motoring. The sea was so flat and calm that Beverley likened the sea to jelly. We continued on our way revealing in the flatness of the sea and the sunset. We got into the Isle of Man at midnight so we secured ourselves to a mooring buoy and went to sleep.
Over to Ireland
The next day we had issues seeing the instruments because we had them on night time display and Beverley needed to put her head under a blanket just so that she could change the brightness. Once the display was bright, we prepared the boat and we sorted out the information we would need for the passage. To do this I had to refer to the book, because I simply could not get the information off the phone. When we are in the Isle of Man, we have to activate the roaming contract and it seems rather silly doing that when you are only there for a night, but we have a tidal atlas on board, which is why we both know how to read it. It was a motor once again, but because there was a thin mist all around us there was even less to see than normal. But we got into Belfast Loch and we knew we were there when we saw this massive cruise ship bearing down on us.
Dealing with Engine
On our trip over to Ireland we developed a noise in the engine. So we tried a few things and the noise disappeared. It could of been a rattle from the dipstick or it could of been the fan belt. What ever it was we fiddled and the noise went.
