There are plans, desires and what we want to do, then there is the UK weather and soon you realise that your plan is out the window. Our plan was to go North and explore parts of Scotland that we had not seen before, but with a week already gone and another three day storm due on the horizon, you have to cut your plans to meet the time you have available. We have our second jab due on the 10th June, now that seems like ages away, but when you are out and about then time soon slips away, so we decided to cut our plan down and explore the Firth of Clyde again, Much smaller trip, but it had the great advantage that my biggest worry which was we had travelled too far North and we would flog ourselves going South again was soon appeased.

With this weeks video, we tried something new in that we decided to start straight into it, with a couple of quotes

No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. - Helmuth von Moltke (the elder)

No sailing plan ever survives contact with the weather - Prudence the boat Penguin

We were in at Glenarm and while we were there the council added another pontoon, it was nice to see, we appreciate seeing the council improving the facilities for our fellow sailors, but the weather was horrible, so we just battened down the hatches and got on with things, for Beverley that is video editing while for myself that is work or one of the many other projects that I have on the go.

While we were in Glenarm, we discussed Binoculars, which are a great thing to have on a yacht. For Beverley, the things you need are:-

1. 7 by 50 - For boat use, this is a great size to have as they magnifies the image 7 times, the aperture is 50mm across, so will let in a lot of light. Another size to consider is 10 by 50, so will magnify the image by 10 times, but seeing as the image uses the same amount of light as the 7 by 50's you sacrifice sharpness for that bigger image.
2. Compass - If you can buy ones that include a compass and a light. The compass is really good for taking bearings, while the light allows you to be able to use the same facility but at night.
3. Good image - Always buy your binoculars in person so that you can see the image. You want one that is clear and has no colour separation and the image ay the side is sharp as well as the image in the centre.

While we were in Glenarm, we went for a walk up at Glenarm forest, it was really pretty with bluebells, ferns and a red squirrel.

A few gays later, the weather cleared, so it was time to go.

While we were crossing the North channel, I was on the main sheet, so I was controlling just how much we were healed over, that felt good. It was an easy sheet to ease off, but I certainly got my stomach exercise in for the tightening up part of the job. You can use a winch for this too, but the stomach was well and truly working hard on this one.

We were having to motor sail, even though we were in quite high winds. We had left late, so we were using the engine on quite low revs just to make up the difference.

The next day, we reviewed our passage and made sure that we were doing things as we should.

So for this particular passage, we had three plans in place.

Plan A - This was up the North channel into Scotland. This would mean that we would be going into a wind over tide situation and with 20knots of head wind, which would give us an apparent of 25knots, this plan was soon discounted.

Plan B - This was to go across with the wind on our beam, this was the plan we took. We did manage to sail the lot, but because we had left late we were motor sailing, but it did mean we were travelling fairly fast for a sail boat.

Plan C - Take the wind on our stern. This would mitigate the wind but because of tide we would be doing this a lot later, so we could end up hitting the next storm, so again, not the best.

Things that we were learning on this point was that waypoints are in boxes, while observations are in circles.