1-2 June Conwy to Port St Mary

Sorry for the delay again. It was a long day on Saturday and. Busy day Sunday.
We departed Conwy at 0630 on Saturday. After winding our way out f the approach channel we set course for the Isle of Man, about 60 miles away. There had been a lot of advice in Conwy that all the marinas would be full due to the TT on at the moment. We decided that Port St Mary was our best option being away from the main race circuit and there would also be the option to anchor.
Again there was next to no wind and what there was, was right on the nose, so another day of motoring. Michael caught sight of a large dorsal fin and Nick briefly saw what he thinks was a small whale. According to a local we were talking to, it could have been a basking shark.
We motored on and eventually the Isle of Man came into sight. The last few miles the breeze got up, but still on the nose.
At some point I had used the radio and switched dual watch off, so wasn’t monitoring Chl 16. I got a call from Daydream to say Belfast CG were calling me. I switched to 16 to hear them calling Foreness. They were trying to local a 28ft sailing yacht that had lost power and were uncertain of their position about 8 miles off the Calf of Man. Had we seen anything that could help? We couldn’t help, but it did at least prove our AIS was carrying some distance, even if Vessel finder can’t see us. Port St Mary lifeboat soon launched. The CG continued to call all the AIS targets in the area, until a French commercial vessel responded about a possible target on their radar. We later heard that they had identified the missing vessel.
We arrived in Port St Mary, with plenty of space. The harbour wall didn’t look appealing with the NW breeze blowing straight on to it, so with some difficulty in the strong breeze we picked up spare moorings. The lifeboat eventually got back about 22.00 with the casualty in tow and moored the vessel against the wall.
Daydream needed to push on Saturday morning as his crew needed to be able to catch a train home by the end of the week and the forecast is looking rough for a few days so we could end up weather bound. Neither myself or Michael had ever been to the Isle of Man so we stayed on in Port St Mary while Nick in Daydream pushed on to Ardglass. We will catch up again later.
We caught a bus to Douglas and another Passenger started talking to us about his rescue by the RNLI after a nut fell off his fuel filter and emptied the contents of his fuel tank in the bilges the afternoon before. The French vessel located him and stayed until the lifeboat arrived.
We got to Douglas and following the guidance of our new Irish friend from the stricken yacht found a viewing point for the TT race. After about an hour after all the roads had been closed and just before the warm up lap started the marshals decided the barrier needed moving back. Our good view was severely reduced. We watched the warm up with bikes going past us at about 180mph. We then faced another hours wait until the race started. With not a great view we decided we had seen enough and headed into town, before catching the bus back to Port St Mary.
Today we are on our way to Ardglass.
More pictures to follow later.

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