Fishguard Day 2

Last night I left you as we settled down to a supper of winkles and limpets.
RECIPIE:
Add limpets and Winkles to a heavy pan of boiling water.
Boil for a minute or so then take off heat and allow to cool.
Pick Limpets out of shells, finely chop (5mm cubes) and put in a bowl of water
Squeeze the limpets under the water,and rinse until water is clear
Remove winkles from shells using a needle. Add white section to bowl of limpets throw the "door" (small plasticey bit) and the brown "poo" spiral.

in a seperate pan melt butter and on a high heat add garlic, and onions, fry till golden brown, add herbs and prepared winkles and limpets

Enjoy

The results were as expected. Both Tasted Fantastic, Winkles the best flavour and texture, Limpets ok taste (mainly from sauce) but texture was like pencil rubber. the act of pulling the winkle morcel out of the shell was also most enjoyable.

As darkness fell a me and billy were chatting out on the foredeck, then all of a sudden the boat in a matter of a second went from horizontal to healing 45degrees. Panicing somewhat with fear it could have been a keel break we removed everything from down below and checked the keel bolts etc, while getting the "Expandy Foam and Condom" hull repair kit out. Fortunatly we had no leaks to find.
We found the ropes to the quay very tight, even at this angle we were hanging significantly. In attempt to aleviate the strain we rigged up some extra ropes from the winches to the quay and tighened them up. with it about low tide we decided it best to go below and watch a film until the boat came afloat again.

At 2 am she started to float, so i got billy to stand on the quay while i loosened off the ropes. If a keel had broke she would now all but capsize with water gushing in the broken hull. If the actual issue was she was hanging on the quay and had deeper water on the side away from the quay then she would float and I would only be able to rock her within a range of angle and that range wouldnt change as the 3 keels hit bottom. Thankfully the latter was true. After a final check of what we could see of the keels over the side and inside the bilges of the hull we put the floor back in and retired for the night.

Morning came and I went up on deck early while there was still water to try to rig a side anchor to aleviate the issue. With a bit of advice from a local fisherman and help from billy once i'd got him up, i was soon off the wall, and found the old girl sitting level when the tide next receeded.

Then Billy and I set about a bit of an exploration of Fishguard Town... I'm not sure if we actually found the town of a side settlement but what we did find was lovely, all bar it all being shut for bankholiday! After a hearty breakfast in the only cafe open we headed back to the cloud and a lovely conversation with a lady who had been at the same high school as me a few moons ago, and her friends.

The Deserted Streets of Fishguard

After this we set off up the other hill of Fishguard to the remenants of the Fishguard Fort. From here we looked across the stunning views of the bay and all the little headlands and coves. Billy and i then decended the jagged cliff and made are way back to the boat via the gorgeous all be it rocky shore.

Then as the tide returned Billy went off caving on the kayak while I set about trying to sort a bit more wiring on board.

 As minutes turned into an hour or so I decided to go back onto the quay to check how the old boy was doing. I looked up into the bay to see Billy Swimming alongside the Kayak, he waved at me quite happily! I didn't quite know if this was stiff upper lip so I ran back to the boat threw off the lines and went to his aid...."Your the Roger Johnson of Kayaking!" To be fair to him i should have re-repaired the crack in the hull after the kayak blew across ynyslas boatyard a month or so ago. The lack of a decent repair made the kayak had become unstable due to a hull full of water and the last straw was the wake off a powerboat. Although I looked the part with the RNLI flags, Billy fairplay had swum best part of half a mile before i "rescued" him.

From here we sailed across to a small cove we'd scoped earlier in the day and triple anchored to keep us in the safe water as the tide receeded. The fishing lines went out overboard and we sat there joyous at how lucky we were to be in such a place.

In the evening I cooked up Mussels from the Harbour Wall (Soak in clean water with a bit of salt and a bit of oats for 6 hours changing the water 3 times, trying to break the mussel open by twisting at each water change, removing beard on first water change, remove barnacles by scraping off with other barnacled mussels, in a heavy pan fry onions and garlic, put in the cleaned mussels add a glass of red wine and herbsput lid on an steam for a few minutes)

We sat eating the mussels on the back deck in the sunshine throwing the shells back to the sea. Much to our ammusement the seagulls kept trying to eat the empty shes and were then very disgruntled when the shells were empty.

As the day drew to a close we kayaked the 3m from the boat to shore and set a fire on the beach, we sat watching the fire and swapping manly stories until about midnight, by which point the boat had dried out and we got back onboard for bed barely getting our toes wet.

Another Great day in Fishguard, What will tomorrow bring?