‘As the engine spluttered and conked out, panic resumed'

A series of unfortunate mistakes threatened to halt Mark and Nadiyana Farnworth’s dream maiden voyage before it began

Cruising on the notoriously rocky yet stunningly beautiful north Welsh coast is not exactly the most ideal starting place for a young, naive couple, who’ve watched too many YouTube videos, to learn some lessons from the sea. We’d bought an old 28ft 1967 Colvic Sea Rover named Good Tidings, an overly fibre-glassed tank of a boat that makes up for its sluggishness with oodles of space. We had the boat in the marina at Pwllheli for about a month, enough time to get to grips with her and learn the basics of sailing, or so we thought...

We had made good progress along the coast for two ‘zero beginners’. We enjoyed the beautiful Cardigan Bay, with it’s stunning backdrop of Snowdonia National Park, had pleasant sails to the beautiful towns of Barmouth, New Quay, Fishguard, and even navigated the fearsome Ramsey Sound with its aptly named hazardous rocks The Bitches. You’d have thought if we were going to be taught a harsh lesson from the sea, it might’ve been here. Instead, it was the picturesque, crystal clear waters of the outer ‘waiting pool’ of Solva.

We had arrived at Solva after shooting through Ramsey Sound on the spring tide. The wind was blowing at about 15 knots, gusting 20. Luckily with the tide through the sound, there weren’t any of those famous standing waves. Good Tidings had never sailed so beautifully than after rounding the headland to Solva with the wind filling her sails from the land. We entered the waiting pool through the narrow, rocky entrance. There wasn’t enough water in the inner harbour to pick up the fore and aft mooring so we anchored in the pool, about a meter or so deep at low tide, Good Tidings brushing the sandy bottom with her bilge keels a few times.

A LITANY OF ERRORS