Ireland – Almost

There was a strong breeze when we woke this morning, rushing down the hills forming the U-shaped bay and making small wavelets on the otherwise calm water. Not sure if it was the time of day or the wind, but there seemed a lot fewer birds out this morning. Their presence however was evident splashed all over the deck and windows. I even got dropped on as I headed out to get the anchor, a nice white patch on my otherwise yellow life jacket.

As far as we could tell from our anchorage, the wind was northerly, but without leaving the bay we had no way of knowing the exact direction, and hence how difficult a day it would be. We were sure it was going to be an upwind track, but exactly how upwind we had yet to see.

Even though the prevailing wind on the south coast of England is south-westerly, meaning we’d originally planned to do a number of upwind days. We’ve been lucky so far this trip in that today is only our third upwind leg. Traveling upwind is a lot harder on the body than downwind. When heading with the wind you stand a lot more upright, with very little pull in the kite or pressure in your legs and arms. The main difficulty, especially on the foils, is ensuring you rise and fall with the waves, attempting to maintain the board at a consistent height above the water. Too low and you slap down losing speed and jarring your knees. Too high and you run out of shaft, the wings of the foil breaching the surface, causing it to lose stability and often sending you flying off the front. When heading upwind you have to use your legs to drive the foil up through the water and keep it pointing in that upwind course. There’s a lot more pressure on your back and shoulders as you try and use as much of the wind’s energy to keep you pointed as close hauled as possible. Your arms get a lot more of a workout too, as you try and keep as much power in the kite as possible. Foils are the only option when going upwind, they’re a lot faster, and point a lot closer to the wind, making a better angle than the twin tips. Heading upwind on a twin tip you’ll take at least four times as long to cover the same distance, and use twice the amount of energy in any given time interval.

To start with, the wind was perfect, blowing in such a direction that we could go in one single tack and reach our intended heading to Ireland. When we launched Stew, he had to halfway de-power his kite, but it was forecast to drop off so this wasn’t such a bad thing. The tide was going against us for the first hour, so Mentor was slightly slower than us at first. This worked out in our favour as it meant when we got too far away we had a chance to tack back across, giving Joe and Jeremy a chance to catch up, but more importantly, giving our legs a rest while still taking us in somewhat the right direction.

There was an excited cheer from the group at 24 miles to go, as this indicated our half way point. After this it was going to be faster to motor forward than head back if we had to finish early for the day. We knew the wind was going to drop to nothing part way through the afternoon, so we were excited to get as far as we did. We were in sight of some Irish hills in the distance when the wind finally did die. We fought it for a bit, trying to use the last gusts of wind to get as far as possible.

Being slightly lighter than Stew, I was able to keep going for a little longer meaning we got separated a little towards the end. We were still close enough to see each other’s kites and the fact neither of us had enough power to get up on the board, but too far away to talk to each other, and too far away for the headsets to work. Our BBTalkin headsets communicate via Bluetooth so require line of sight. When we’re up and riding Stew can be the size of an ant on the horizon (about 1600meters) and we can still talk, but as soon as one of us is in the water, the range goes down to about 20 meters, especially in any sort of swell.

As I was wallowing in the water trying desperately to keep my kite in the sky, something in the water caught my eye. With some of my attention still on my kite I tried to see what it was. Definitely not a log or seaweed but some sort of sea monster! It could have only been about 15 meters away. When you’re all alone on the water without anyone to talk to its funny how your mind jumps to this. I took a quick look back to see how far Mentor was, but too far to shout. Was it a basking shark? Those can get up to 8m in length, not something I want to be drifting over when I can’t get up and riding. Was it a killer whale? No, those are more common up in Scotland. My heart started racing until I realised it was just a curious seal coming up to say hello. He was between me and my kite, so quite a tame little thing. Sure did make my heart skip a beat though when I first saw it. It obviously thought I wasn’t very exciting as it soon left, surfacing again about 30 minutes later next to Mentor, once we’d finished packing up for the day. Guess he was just looking out for us.

Skomer, and neighbouring Skokholm are home to around half the world’s population of Manx shearwaters nests. These birds spend the first five years of their lives in the South Atlantic off the coast of Brazil, before returning to within meters of where they were born to lay their own nests. Clumsy on land, they leave at dawn to feeding grounds in the Irish sea and don’t return until dusk, making them hard to spot.

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