Only twenty miles to go today but important to get the tides just right for traversing the Menai Straits. Now there’s no denying that the Menai Straits and in particular an area called “the Swellies” can be a dangerous stretch of water to navigate. However, it’s a bit like changing an electrical socket, if you turn the current off then there’s no problem. If you do it with the current on, you could get a shock.

The equivalent to turning off the current is to traverse the dangerous bits at High Water when there is no current, (and of course lots of water depth). The tricky bit is timing but I won’t bore you with that bit. The rest is just following a quite narrow and winding path past all the various rocks, shallows and of course the wreck of the HMS Conway.

The day started cloudy and cool, with an annoying family in a speedboat, water skiing through the moorings repeatedly. The timing of our run through the Straights meant we didn’t have to start until midday which meant some time to catch up on the blog..

Entering the North end of the Strait, past Puffin Island, (a different one) the quite choppy sea flattened as we poottled in still a little ahead of schedule, the sun came out and the rest can be said in pictures.

No real problems, as we leisurely made our way down the 14 miles to Caernarvon marina. If anything, we were a little too early going through as the tide was quite strong against us under the Menai bridge, that said, by the time we were passing Plas Newydd the tide was under us and going into the narrow harbour entrance a few miles later with 2.5 kts of cross tide was quite tricky.

It’s a lovely marina, lots of friendly helping hands, really good showers, and an on the ball, Dockmaster.

We will stay here two nights. Tomorrow we’ll explore the town.

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