Sailing through the Menai strait

July 3, 2021

The Menai strait is a shallow and narrow strait that separates mainland Wales from Anglesey. The tidal currents in the strait can be really strong. The most dangerous part is the Swellies, located between the two bridges in the strait. There is a lot of shallows in the part of the strait and the tidal currents can create whirlpools here. The tidal current can be up to 8 knots at worst. Don’t want to have that against you…

When sailing through the Swellies you use slack time for Liverpool as a reference. More about when to time sailing through the Menai strait can be found here: Passage Through the Swellies.

We filled up on diesel and then left to sail through the Swellies. The water was really calm when we entered the Swellies and we passed the area without any problems.

We continued through the Menai strait and out to sea and started our overnight sail up to Islay, Scotland. It was another calm sail with not much wind and fog!

Here is the YouTube video from our time in Northern Wales, we speak Swedish mostly in our videos but all have English subtitles.