From Holyhead we headed south and anchored off Porth Dinllaen. This is a long beach and a village all owned by the National Trust. When you visit Dinllaen with a car you have to stop at a car park (and pay for it) then walk across a golf course and down to the beach carrying everything you need. In the evening you pack up and do it all in reverse. In a boat, you sail into the bay and then anchor in about four meters of water and enjoy the view. The pub is only a dinghy ride away.
All the weather forecasts agreed that there would be no wind for another 24 hours so we left the boat at anchor and walked up the nearby hill Garn Boduan. It is only 250 meters high but stands alone and we would have had amazing views if there hadn’t have been such a heat haze. As it was we could still see Artemis at anchor some five kilometers away. On the summit there are the remains of an iron age fortified settlement. We used one of the hut remains to shelter from the breeze.
In the night the wind came up as expected which soon built up a decent swell but made for great sailing the next day. We motored out of the bay and then sailed all the way round the peninsula to the buoy off Porthmadog. Downwind we were averaging seven knots and then back up wind still managing five. Great sailing with Chiara the wind monitor doing the work.
It became obvious that we were easily going to reach Portmadog before the high tide so we contacted the harbour master who was kind enough to assign us a mooring and send us the most up to date sketch of the entrance channel including a list of corrections. We felt very adventurous as we navigated from buoy to buoy watching bearings and depths and with as little as 40cm below our keel.