Newlyn to Kinsale

Arriving beats any amount of hope when travelling.

We had 3 restful days in Newlyn, moored next to Johan Sebastian; a rather rusty 36 footer from  whose cabins, it is believed, about 38 unfortunate Vietnamese citizens had emerged quite recently, only to be arrested when their minivan was subsequently stopped on the M5.  Anyway, it was time to get on with our adventure again.

Newlyn to anywhere in Ireland is much too far. We would aim at Baltimore. We looked up Baltimore on Google only to find that it was somewhere in America and really not a good destination at all.  Anyway we set off, firm in the belief that with some judicious tacking we might be in Ireland sometime before Brexit.  We might have F5 on the nose, 170 miles to go, and to be honest, very little enthusiasm for sailing upwind in the rain at night when it was cold but we all knew that “this was yachting” and this was what we had to do to get to Ireland.

 (This of course was entirely untrue as we could have gone by air of have even booked a perfectly sensible ferry.)

However, we did have Martin on board. Martin however, was not entirely alone. He was accompanied by a virus.

It was not long at all before Martin asked whether we had any Stugeron.   On balance I thought this was a slightly bad omen.  Readers will know that Martin doesn’t get seasick.

In the drizzle, heading out of Newlyn harbour I reflected on our recent departure from our pontoon.  Having just cheerily explained to a neighbouring boat how much blue water sailing we had accomplished over the years, he might not have been entirely impressed by the way we left the berth.  It really doesn’t matter how much reverse throttle is applied if your bow isn’t untied from the pontoon.  Another nice onlooker reminded us that we had “ropes in the water” and eventually we escaped.

The crossing to Baltimore was rapidly abandoned in favour of Kinsale. Kinsale is nearer and has a pontoon and a washing machine.

Newlyn to Kinsale took 28 hours, none of which were even slightly pleasurable.  We adopted our tried and tested watch system in which Martin generally helms (ably assisted by Doris) while Jean made nutritious chicken stews (interspersed with Cup-a-Soups) and I slept.  The system was more complicated than usual as Martin’s “nasty virus” seemed to be developing into some sort of bronchopneumonia.

Anyway, 28 hours, 14 Stugeron , 8 Cup-a-Soups and 45 litres of (red) diesel  later we limped into Kinsale, re-fuelled (without destroying anything of much importance) and went to sleep

.

Over the next 36 hours Martin’s virus spread to the entire ship’s company apart from Doris. This, I felt was entirely unfair, because if Doris had got it, at least she wouldn’t have coughed.

Berthed in Kinsale