Over the last few weeks I've painted it, applied some aluminium skids on the keel, built a trolley out of some pram wheels I found 'Up the forestry' and fitted a towbar to the car to tow it down in a trailer. After all this loving attention, I was hence, less that happy to see water pouring in from a hitherto unnoticed hole. Anyway, that would have to be fixed, off for a sail.The wind forecast was 4, 5, 6, or 7, mainly NorthEasterly, depending on the time and source of the forecast. It was a Force 3 from the West when we got to Dale...........Our friend Adam, from the Hurley silhouette Watermint, joined us for a coffee, and we spotted a seal on the nearby floating pontoon
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Seal"]
[/caption]He let me get surprisingly close in the tender to photograph him, and even stayed there later when several boats moored. There may have been something wrong with him, although he seemed quite content watching the grey mullet under the pontoon.
Louise set off for a bit of practice, keeping close inshore, navigating the small bays on the North side of Milford Haven, such as Monk's Haven
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Monk's Haven"]
[/caption]and then into Sandy Haven, where we bumped into another yacht from Cardiff, Cassandra, and her crew, Karen, Peter and Elaine.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Cassandra"]
[/caption]We then switched the engine on and slowly picked our way up Sandy Haven Pill, until we got to just 1 foot under the keel
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Sandy Haven Pill"]
[/caption]The spectacular yellows of the Oil Seed Rape looked wonderful against the blues of the spring skies, and it was warm, very warm for late April.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Sandy Haven"]
[/caption]A lovely sail back to Dale followed, Cassandra just ahead of us. Sails set perfectly, we quickly narrowed the distance between us and teh bilge keeler, before inexplicably falling behind again. Peter later informed us that was when they'd started their engine.......
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Sailing"]
[/caption]Further up the Haven, the ships and tugs went about their business, one on fire drill
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Fire Drill"]
[/caption]A few beers in the Griffin with Peter, Elaine and Karen, later, we were joined by Adam. There was a barbeque, part of the Royal wedding celebrations, but Tigger found the pickings quite scant.
A good day.
The wind picked up in the night and the chain from the mooring banging on the bow, together with the wind in the rigging and I didn't get much sleep. Louise fitted a new display unit for our wind instrument, and set about cleaning the boat, as the wind, and sea, picked up from the East.
She pumped some sealer into the hole in our tender
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Leaky"]
[/caption]About an hour later I was rudely awakened from a snooze by Louise shrieking. After all the love I had lavished on our tender, she'd left me without reason or warning, taking our oars, baiiler and a dive cylinder with her. Reason - sheared bolt on the painter line.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="She's left me"]
[/caption]With the leak, and the choppy sea, it dawned on me she might have sunk. A view of the shore at Dale through the binoculars yielded nothing. I tried to take Ishtar in, but it very quickly became clear there was not enough water. Louise pumped the inflatable and 20 minutes later, rang to inform me, thankfully, that it had blown ashore and been tied to the pontoon by a windsurfer.
Adam, and Dave, from Mar y Sol, came to our rescue, and within 20 minutes, the leak was plugged with a stainless bolt and some epoxy resin. Dave even zipped out to pick me up in his tender. Coffee and biscuits aboard Mar Y Sol were followed a little later by a few beers in Dale Yacht Club
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Ishtar's crew, Dale yacht club"]
[/caption]The beers certainly helped us to see the funny side of things, we'd lost nothing but a couple of hours.
I'm not sure what I said in the bar, but clearly it was hilarious, judging by the looks on the faces of Nick, Adam and Dave.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="DYC"]
[/caption]When we left Ishtar, the wind instrument was reading 0 knots. By the time we'd met the others at the club, it was blowing 20 knots from the East, with more later. A very wet trip back to Ishtar was followed by another uncomfortable and noisy night. By the morning we were both overtired. We'd arranged to help Dave and Adam fit a wind unit toi the top of Mar Y Sol's mast, but they had both headed home too, so we packed up and headed ashore.
Bobbing about in a small tender with large waves is not fun at the best of times, but we then had to quickly manoeuvre back into the waves when a thoughtless chap in a speed boat faffed around, not realising we had to cross his bow to get to the beach, and he was getting blown ashore. We got soaked for that.
Tigger was most upset to find that someone had chained a ball to the concrete slip
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Why chain a ball to the beach?"]
[/caption]We tied up th etender in the tender park and headed home. Not the best sailing weekend.
