Working your way south down the Irish Sea in late summer is not for the faint of heart nor those with an impatient nature. The winds tend to blow from the south, on the nose, and strong tidal currents guarantee stacked waves for a good chunk of each tidal cycle.

Wind Horse is certainly capable of dealing with these conditions, and making short work of the passage, but her crew has become soft in their dotage. Back in the olden days, say when we used to be sailors, we’d just shorten down and bang our way to windward, and get it over. If the wind was whipping the halyards, and the sea was pounding on the breakwater or barrier reef, we’d say “good sailing breeze.”

We don’t mind open ocean head seas, but when we are seeing twelve to fifteen foot (3.6 to 4.5m) waves with almost vertical faces, these days we prefer to wait.

The periods of relative calm around here are short. On the order of eight to twelve hours is what we have been seeing.

But between fronts there is blue sky, the sea moderates, and the critters come out to play. This batch of leaping dolphins were so close we could not zoom out far enough to get them fully framed.

We were running downwind to the harbor at Fishguard when we passed the small commercial boat above. They were jibing down wind, keeping the waves on their stern quarter, to avoid stuffing their bow and broaching (we were having a nice time surfing square to the waves).

This big cutter had been sitting in Fishguard for five days waiting for a break in the weather.

Then came a traditional ketch, also making its way south.

Fishguard treated us to a rare display of thunder and lightning topped off by a rainbow.

And even teased us with a bit of blue.

Shortly thereafter the barometer began rising and the wind went from southwest to the northwest. Our two sailing neighbors departed (the ketch returning in a few hours). We decided to let the southwest seas moderate (they were still running 12 to 15 feet) and left the next morning.

We were rewarded with blue skies, and a somewhat confused but moderate six foot (1.85m) sea and hundreds of frigate birds doing flybys.

Listening to the UK Met Service weather forecast it is hard to tell how much “inflation” they incorporate so as not to be caught out and have the press and politicians pointing fingers. Almost every forecast we have been seeing includes a gale warning, often when the raw model data doesn’t support this in our eyes (nor the resulting weather). However, the aforementioned currents and sea states have us in conservative mode so we have been running at eleven or more knots to minimize our exposure, picking those brief tween systems periods to passage.

Lands End in the background and Longships light house. This is the southeast corner of the Irish Sea after which the southwesterly gales are off our stern.

Finally, our southernmost point for this cruising season, 49 degrees, 56 minutes north, off the Lizard, the UK’s southernmost point, 30 degrees south of the Arctic ice pack north of Svalbard. The time may have come for a change in cruising climate.