We have to navigate the notorious Swellies in the Menai Strait which is noted for the difficulty in navigating it. It has shoals, rocks, surges and (occasionally) whirlpools and planning your passage through it requires careful study of all the pilotage marks that have been installed over the years.

As if it was not difficult enough, it seems to have sprouted a new hazard as Jet skis and RIB "thrill-seekers" now tear through and often approach yachts closely, presumably to give the paying punters a good view, but the wake turbulence they cause is very unpleasant and you cannot manoeuvre to avoid it.
http://www.saltylass.co.uk/navigating...
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in general I love him Rey charts I love

the fact you get all these little chart

lets and you don't need to get half a

dozen charts out like you do with the

atom e ability portfolios however this

led me into making a bit of a boo-boo I

was looking at a passage plan and

basically we want to go from here all

the way down through here time to here

so I did what you usually do in these

situations I got the dividers and I

measured out how far it was from our

Anchorage to where we needed to be to do

the passage in the swell ease and as you

can see hopefully it's about 10 nautical

miles however this is where I went wrong

that's scale down the side doesn't apply

to this chart it applies to the main

chart up here this chart has its own

scale cutting me hidden up the inside

and it's completely different

this distance isn't ten months this

distance is about four miles and that

makes the whole thing totally different

ever sitting beating myself up wondering

how we were going to get from here down

to here in time to catch the current

through the swirlies I was wondering

cloud looking to manage it it's going to

be easy the whole distance we need to do

isn't 16 miles it's about six miles they

could walk it make it on time

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during summer in the UK here comes the

rain and those of you watching in color

the black and white thing in the

distances Menai bridge

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when it comes to morning boys one of the

things that we find is our friend is mr.

swiftly and we have actually mounted him

at 90 degrees to a decorating pole that

you use for painting okay can you do

that again yes it's not a decorating

pole that we use a painting so what

birds doing now is she's doing a sheet

Bend this is probably gonna be a double

sheet Bend if she knows this say she's

just doing a single sheet then that does

sort of her all sorts of stuff so she's

hot just put a simple note on there now

this is our second line that we're

putting on now there's a pretty big

mooring

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they're here and she's attached it and

that's the Rope gone through once you've

got the first line through that allows

you to take your second line down which

is your mooring line now this is the bit

I always find hard to do actually is

getting rid of all the rest of the sheet

bends and everything because you just

seem to have lots of rope around when

she's actually doing it both of the clip

both ropes around and cleated so so now

that we've got the second rope on she's

just gonna fiddle with the front because

she's from the wrong side when she did

it first because your primary job is to

get mirrored up come follow high water

yeah can all be fixed later and that's

what we've just done we've just fixed it

all later

now this is a big one so I don't think

we're going to go anywhere on this

Maureen boy we've got to understand kiss

but let's get one we've got two on I

know it's time for cup of tea

you

so this is a close-up of where we're

going and it's the gap between the two

bridges Menai bridge and britannia

bridge and this passage is full of rocks

and all sorts of things and channels and

it's difficult to get through it's

notice and swell ease we come through

the bridge at the midpoint and we take a

line to this Cardinal until we passed

the bungalow and the boathouse that gets

us past this bunch of rocks here called

the planners which stack up nearly three

meters above chart datum once we pass

them we can aim for the gap midway

between the Cardinal and prices point

here once we reach that point however we

then got to aim for the cottage on here

until we intercept this leading line and

we mean to set this leading line which

is done with two pylons here we're

Undine it but we can't run all the way

down it once we're between cribben rock

and this pyramid if we carry on down the

line will run into the rocks so once we

reach the pyramid we then have to swing

height again towards the center of this

span but once we come through this span

there's more rocks on this side so from

here we've got to go to the statue of

Lord Nelson until we're in mid-channel

at which point we can then turn and we

will have safely navigated through

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two men I bridge and we can just about

see the bungalow just ahead

what's that you see Welling go through

on the midpoint

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he's gonna make fun

the games

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holy that's the big bungalow that

we need to be a beam or you can see

where the upwelling is because it's just

fair underneath the blown house

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and you go holy jumps as well

we're now just on the transit

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I forgot wait that's ridiculous

perfect transit line land

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that's what we wanted our Phoenix it's

now out here in the river ha oh we

harbored up

so we've moored up at Porton Eric which

is a very tiny little crack in the wall

to be honest but in this particular one

we're on a harbor wall again so we're

using angels to keep us in but on this

one we've also got these lines so where

is before our Paul Patrick we had risers

here for these sorts of lines so we've

got one of them moored on to that one

okay so and then we've got another one

moored on to the front so down there

I've got an angel and I've also as an

extra precaution I've got a line on to

one of these little lines that come down

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