Cardigan Bay

For once the weather was seeming to cooperate with our plans and we arranged to leave Victoria Dock at 2 o'clock, this being the optimum time to exit the rather daunting southern entrance to the Menai, the Caernafon bar.

It quickly appeared that quite a few other boats had the same idea, which gave me confidence in my calculations if nothing else!

The weather was lovely and the wind for once seemed to be predominantly from the North West, thus as the marina sill was dropped a veritable fleet of yachts assembled and filed in convoy down towards Fort Belan and the narrow entrance channel. As we approached the fort I was surprised to see some mounted napoleonic era troops around the canons, obviously a re- enactment group of some description.

The convoy continued out towards the non existent fairway buoy about four miles distant ( the buoy is missing, there is a reward for anyone who discovers its present location.

The channel is fairly straightforward but it is very clearly evident that shallow banks hem you in on both sides.

At the fairway buoys approximate location the majority of yachts headed off towards Holyhead. We however were heading for Fishguard in Pembokeshire.

Thus we ate course down the Llynne peninsular towards Bardsey Island.

The weather although very pleasant was once again playing tricks with the wind direction and in order to round Bardsey before the change of tide necessitated us using the engine.

As we passed and changed direction towards the south we were able to lay a course very nearly towards Fishguard and we raised full sail.

Lynne was below making a brew when I heard a loud snort, the unmistakable exhalation of a cetacean, in this case a dolphin, I called to Lynne to come up and see, soon we saw more and then suddenly two almost left the water crossing in opposite directions in front of Allandale our tenders bow which we were towing behind.

Lynne went on deck to get a closer look and quickly the boat was surrounded by playful Dolphins.

I'm afraid my hurried photos are not very good, but it was a magical experience after ten minutes of playing under the bow and surfacing loudly almost within touching distance of our hull, they silently left astern.

As the sun set we settled in for a long night, the wind held relatively steady until just before the dawn when we had to resort to the engine again to lay our course.

We picked up a mooring in the old harbour at six o'clock in the morning. This was the setting for an old BBC dramatisation of Under Milk Wood. I was more concerned with whether we had enough water under our keel as it was dead on low water, we seemed to have about half a metre so I could relax. We were very tired after our nights adventures so after a quick coffee we retired to bed.

Dark Tarn is just off the point