Leaving England and Wales behind for the moment




 It felt quite something to sail away from mainland Britain to Ireland - I can’t quite believe how far we have come in a few weeks.  The passage from Neyland to Kilmore Quay in Ireland went well and we arrived earlier than we expected at about 8.00 this morning. In fact we had to slow down for the last few miles as we didn’t want to negotiate the variety of rocks in the dark.  Once again we were surrounded by wonderful porpoises who seemed to be playing on our bow wave.   We have all felt a bit tired today, following the night sail but for all of us it is ‘happy tired’.  At lunch time we had crab rolls - all agreed they were fabulous and then as an even more special treat, we have a seal in the harbour.  

We were asked to move our boat to another berth and this turned out to be a very good thing.  For some days we have been puzzled that our jib furling line was now quite short and that a length seemed to have disappeared.  Today we say what had happened - a large amount of our line was wrapped around our propellor. We borrowed a tender and Roger was able to hook the line with a boat hook.  I say ‘we’ - I was in fact having a nap at the time. 

Tomorrow we leave here at 5.30 am to catch a favourable tide to help us on our way to our next destination, which is Arklow, further north up the Irish Coast. Then on Thursday or Friday we reach Dublin.  

One of our number, Barbara, a remarkable lady who sails single handed, had a nasty experience about five miles off from Kilmore Quay.  She lost all her electrics, including her VHF radio, so was without any navigational aids in very tricky waters.  She wisely called the Lifeboat who were tremendous and towed her to safety.  She said she got here rather quicker than she would have otherwise!  Her electrics were fixed in a few minutes so she is all set to sail on to Arklow with the rest of us. 


Neyland to Kilgore Quay        85.1 nms

Comments

  1. RickMay 23, 2023 at 9:04 PM

    Glad Roger will be celebrating his birthday in Dublin-very fitting. A Guiness is called for.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tony CharlesMay 24, 2023 at 9:10 AM

    Hi Christine and Roger - we love Kilmore Quay. Have you come across our lovely Canadian friends Sally and Noel on Kalinka 1. We first met them in Shetland and sailed in company with them that year. They left Kilmore last evening and arrived in Arklow at 2am this morning. See you have just left Arklow. We're off to Sea Pilgrim for this w/e.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. chrisMay 24, 2023 at 5:42 PM

      Yes, met them briefly this morning. They rafted up on the boat behind us. Alan, one of our crew, got up to help them in. Chris and I slept through it!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Home at Last!

Image
We finished last week wondering how we would get our lovely boat fixed. The local man (rightly I think) felt we would be better served by getting a Yanmar dealer, but the one we contacted in Chichester was clearly not interested in taking on the job. There was another firm in Chichester, Cutler Marine, whose voicemail said they were closed for annual leave so on Monday this week, Roger was on the case at 9 a.m.  Success! Luke from Cutler Marine said he would be at the boat at 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning to investigate the problem.  Roger travelled down to Littlehampton by train on Tuesday to be there when Luke arrived.  What wonderful service - Luke arrived early bringing with him some spare parts he thought might be needed.  Not only is Cutler Marine a Yanmar dealer, but they look after 30 Crabbers in Chichester. By mid-morning Luke had fitted a new wiring harness, starter motor and ignition plate and we were back in business!  I was about to go out with the local Ramblers group (expe
Read more

A safe harbour

Image
 Our exit from the Caledonian Canal felt like ‘speedy boarding’.   They really pulled the stops out and from our first bridge at 8.20, everything else was seamless, locks, bridges, and finally the sea lock, all open for us.  We were safely tied up in Inverness Marina by mid morning. We liked the marina and Inverness very much. The city is attractively built on both banks of the River Ness and we enjoyed a run in the morning and an Indian meal later that night.  We had been intending to aim for Lossiemouth the next day, then Whitehills, then Peterhead but we looked at the weather forecasts and decided we didn’t have the luxury of taking three days as the weather was definitely looking stormy on the Saturday. This has turned out to one of our better decisions.  On Thursday we sailed straight to Whitehills. It was a long day but a good one. We made excellent progress all day and covered the 60 miles in 12 hours, arriving at Whitehills at 21.00.  The entrance to the harbour was magical.  F
Read more

Not quite the finishing straight

Image
 Well sailing keeps springing surprises. Up until around six o’clock last night we expected to complete our circumnavigation either today (Friday) or tomorrow.  Only 37 more miles to go. It was not to be.  Everything was going really well. We have loved having Georgina on the boat and we had a great day’s sailing from Dover to Eastbourne which ended with a delightful meal with Martin (and Jack the dog) and Barbara in an Italian restaurant.   Eastbourne Marina is some distance from the town itself and entry and exit is via a lock.  We were moored by the lifeboats and saw the crew come home happy from whatever rescue they had been engaged in.  The next day (yesterday) we headed for Littlehampton. Littlehampton has a bar to cross so entry and exit has to be a couple of hours either side of high tide. The earliest we would safely be able to get in was 5 p.m. so we didn’t have to have a very early start.  We refuelled at Eastbourne and came out of the lock around 10 a.m. Before long we were
Read more