Scotland to Isle of Man

A quick follow on from last night's blog to start with, the helicopter firing practice carried on until 2.00am, not that it kept anyone awake, but before we headed to our beds we were treated to an impressive display of tracer bullet fire with the bullets ricocheting off the distant headland back into the air.
We were awoken following a very quiet night at anchor by Ian and after a quick breakfast soon had the anchor up and were under way. The wind looked promising so the sails were soon set and we were underway. It looked like the day was going to be a long downwind sail to the Isle of Man and as the sails seemed to be a little underpowered for the prevailing conditions the decision was made to change our Yankee (the small headsail) for the twin Genoas (much larger headsails). This involved close to an hour of dragging sails about on the foredeck which included flaking the Yankee so that it fitted back into the sail locker in the forepeak and also dragging the two big headsails out of the same locker and laying them out on the deck before slowly feeding them into the grooves in the furling system on the forestay, no mean feat in the waves and wind that we had at the time. All the sail changing finished we were off again and heading straight for the Isle of Man, leaping along at close to 8kn boat speed for a couple of hours before the wind abruptly ceased and we were back to using the ever reliable engine.
Lunch of Jacket spuds and cheesy beans was taken on deck and enjoyed by all and shortly afterwards we sighted the Isle of Man in the distance ahead.
Off the Point of Ayre we motored through a very wavy tide rip which was very exciting and felt like a theme park ride, some even suggested that we could perhaps turn around and go through it again. Once through that we entered the more calm waters of the East side of the Isle of Man and motored in the flat calm weather past Ramsey Bay then Laxey Bay, spotting some Manx Shearwaters as we went, and then on to Douglas Bay where we moored up next to a fisheries protection vessel which some of us had a look around.
As we had our tea we watched the ferry Ben My Cree come in and then soon after leave again, we also unsuccessfully had a go at crabbing before going for a brisk stride along the promenade. As we arrived back a second Sea Cat arrived into Douglas, this one called Snaefell, which also left soon after arriving.
Tomorrow we head back to Peil Island and are promised an early start of about 7.00am to make the crossing back to England.
Henry