Milford Haven

We moored up to the visitors pontoon in Dale Bay at just before 22-00 having covered 68M from Padstow. In the morning, the sun was out, and there were lots of dinghys out in the bay, including this one with brightly coloured sails.

A little later we decided to move to one of the marinas further up Milford Haven Sound, this involved navigating through all the oil and gas piers, not to mention a variety of large vessels coming and going. One thing we did notice was that when any large ship passed moored oil or gas tankers, a large tug was always in place between the fairway and the tanker - presumably to push any ship away from the tanker in an emergency ! This can be seen in the photo below, with the tug between the tanker and the Irish Ferries ship.

We decided to go into Milford Haven Marina, and after quite a long wait for the gate to open, we entered the most enormous lock. We were requested to move to the far end of the floating pontoon, and were subsequently joined by a beautiful square rigged  traing ship. We had to wait an hour for the lock to be opened into the marina, so time for a cup of coffee.

We spent two nights in the marina, then, after re-fueling, left while the lock was open on 'free-flow', just before a tanker was due through the lock, and then to the dry dock which ran parallel to the lock basin. We returned to Dale for the night to be close to the entrance.

The tides are very strong off St. David's Head, and we needed to wait until 13-00 before setting off. After motoring out for an hour and a half, we turned to about 340degrees, and sailed for the rest of the afternoon with a monumental tide under us - we logged a maximum speed over ground of 10.4Knots !! We arrived in Fishguard and were anchored off Lower Town at 19-50.