Things That Go Thump In The Night!

As evening fell on Friday 17th May and with the weather forecast indicating a change to strong northerly winds, we took Rapport round the E side of Skomer, through Jack Sound to anchor in South Haven on the opposite side of the island.

Skomer North Haven (LHS) and South Haven (RHS)

Then we settled down for the night, knowing that we had an early start the following day.  

Suddenly, at about 3am, we heard thumps against the rigging followed by bumps onto the deck.  We tore ourselves out of our bunk and saw that we were enclosed by a thick fog and the thumps and bumps were the sounds of numerous unfortunate birds bouncing off our rigging and landing onto the deck.  We could see faint outlines of birds flying chaotically around the boat and did not want to be flown into ourselves, so went below to work this out.  We were not sure how badly hurt the birds were and desperately wanted to stop this happening.  We already had our all-round white anchor light showing and tried turning on our lower red, green and white navigation lights in case this allowed the birds to see us better but the collisions continued.  So then we turned all our lights off and the birds stopped flying into us - it seemed that our lights had been attracting the disorientated birds.  

We retired to bed and could hear the sad whimpers of a few birds crying out to each other from time to time.  As far as we knew, the Manx Shearwaters are the only nocturnal seabird on Skomer and we assumed correctly that these had been the ones flying round in the dark fog around our boat.

Manx Shearwater

The shearwaters had all been tucked up in their burrows when we had walked across the island the previous day.  They hunt using their incredible sense of smell and so it seems choose to fly at night.

Next morning we gingerly looked out on deck and found just four shearwaters huddling together in two pairs at the aft end of the cockpit underneath the helmsman's seat.  I carefully picked up each bird and gently tossed it over the side and onto the water.  The birds set off either swimming, diving or flying away from the boat.  We were so glad that they seemed OK and guessed they had not been able to take off from the confines of our cockpit, so had huddled together not knowing what else to do.  

After that worrying night, we hoisted sails and set off to cross the St George's Channel across the Irish Sea headed for Ireland and Kilmore Quay 60 miles away.  The wind was in the N all day and rose to F6 at midday, so we wound in some of our jib and put a reef in the main.  We were sailing fast and reached a speed of 8 knots over the ground with a little help from the SSW-going tides.

Strong Winds in St George's Channel

The visibility was only moderate during the voyage and we finally spotted the faint shape of Saltee Island and the channel leading to Kilmore Quay at about 2 miles off.

It was very good to head into harbour at 16:45 and tie alongside as the sun finally shone through the heavy clouds.

Kilmore Quay Marina

Now that we had reached Ireland, it was only right to sample real Guinness at one of the bars ashore :)

 Next day we cleaned the boat and followed the path round the local sand-dunes, which are a protected nature reserve.

Sand Dune Walk at Kilmore Quay