Moondance back on tour

Moondance is back on tour for the second leg of my adventure. The plan this year is to head up to Scotland via Islay, Mull and Skye to the Hebrides and the Western Isles, hopefully up to the Faroes and back down to the Shetland and Orkney Isles wintering at the northern tip of Scotland. Scotland has its best weather in May and June so I have made an early start to get up there before the midges and rain become rampant; we will see!
I had a lot of work over the winter catching up on the several years of maintenance that had not been done that caused me so much trouble last year. The toilets and all associated pipework have been removed, cleaned, serviced, pipes changed and replaced for a trouble free, non toilet cupboard yoga year. We will see about that too. I had a lot of trouble with leaking rudder seals last year so whilst she was on the hard at Holyhead I took out the rudders and replaced the seals. That blue thing on the ground to the left of the boat is one of the rudders!

I arrived at Holyhead with Olly, my youngest son, on Wednesday last week planning to leave for the Isle of Man the following day. We woke at 6 on Thursday  morning to a howling northerly wind and a heavy drizzle and promptly stuck our heads back under the covers. By lunch time the wind had dropped and the sun had come out so I took Olly out for a spin round the bay to show him how yachting should be done. Beer in one hand and fishing rod in the other he decided he rather like this life! Sadly the fish did not bite.

Friday morning we had a spanking westerly wind and headed for the Isle of Man, 8 hours sail away. We pulled into the southern end of the island at about 5 o'clock and settled down to as quiet an evening as the force 6 wind would allow, or so we thought. Our calm was shattered an hour later when the anchor started to drag, a first once the anchor has dug in. Two more attempts proved fruitless, a rocky bottom I think so we went to pick up a mooring and the fun really started. The mooring was close to the shore and to avoid any danger I approached with more speed than I would have liked. I overshot the mooring, turning away from the shore to avoid any trouble and somehow ended up with a longer than usual mooring strop under the boat. No problem, go into neutral and drift away. Perfect until we came to a halt with the stern to wind and the mooring behind us. The strop had gone under the hull and snagged my starboard rudder, we were moored by the rudder! Well, a little embarrassing but remarkable effective! It took us the next hour to extricate ourselves, removing the strop that was now jammed between the top of the rudder and the hull. The second attempt was more succesfull and we finally got a peaceful night.
On Saturday Olly took the bus to Douglas and got the ferry home; my cousin Rob was inbound on the same ferry to join me for the next leg.