Kinsale to Kilrush

5^th May 2019

To Crookhaven.

The plan was to get as far as possible around Ireland whilst regaining our health and pulmonary function.

As Ship’s Doctor I was especially concerned to note that, presumably as a result of The Virus, none of the ship’s company had retained any interest in drinking wine.  Even The Captain (me) couldn’t countenance the smallest glass of the stuff.

  

We had, for the first time since “A” Levels become involuntarily Tea Total.

Crookhaven is a safe and easy place to anchor. 

We found a spot just off Granny Island, which did at least sound comforting.

6^th May

To Dingle. 58NM

We had a comparatively easy voyage. 

Doris helmed. 

I slept. 

Everyone coughed.

Dingle is a little gem.

We were welcomed (of course) by Fungie, the resident Bottlenose dolphin.  

Fungie has for many years been the backbone of the Dingle economy. 

Fungie-watching apparently attracts tourists from as far south as Baltimore and as far north as Craggy Island.  

Unfortunately Fungie is actually Fungie The Third.   

(Fungie 1 got entangled in fishing nets and Fungie 2 was shot by some delinquent youths, but Fungie 3 is doing fine).

We like Dingle Marina and her Harbour Master.  

We refuelled with particularly fine green diesel (which for some reason was only available for cash) and settled down to convalesce in this beautiful town.  

Dingle has a Lidl (in fact there are now 150 Lidls in Ireland but only 149 Tescos) and you can buy fish and chips, postcards and stamps for England elsewhere in the town.  

My only slight criticism, perhaps, is that the marina’s lovely modern shower block doesn’t have any heating and on one occasion the lovely modern shower didn’t have any water. 

We understand that the Irish are much tougher than we English.

We went on a minibus tour of the local views and archaeology and learnt all about the making of Ryan’s Daughter and Star Wars XII (or so).

Bus tour from Dingle

Beach near Dingle

10^th May

To Fenit.

To get to Fenit  we needed to transit Blasket Sound.  

Reader(s) will of course remember that Santa Maria de La Rosa foundered in Blasket Sound on her way back home after the Armada in 1588.  Apparently this disaster resulted from a navigational error rather than a miscalculation of the prevailing tidal streams but, none the less, I was determined that we should get our “tidal calcs” right on this occasion.   

Martin, worked them out,  Jean checked them (and I asked the Harbour Master).  All agreed. 

We survived.

Fenit is another lovely town.  

The harbour and marina is built on a rock which is attached to the mainland by a long causeway. Many years ago there was a cunning plan to turn Fenit into an important west coast port (because it is on the west coast of Ireland and therefore significantly nearer America where most Irish people now live). Unfortunately the plan never really took off and Fenit remains a nice little place.

Fenit Top tip 1:  Communicating with the Harbour Master.

The Harbour Master is very nice and helpful. Communication is best achieved by the full use of all available prostheses.    

1. Put on your glasses (so you can see what he’s saying)  

2. Put in your hearing aid, if you have one (so that you can hear what he’s saying)   

3. Arrange any dialogue to happen just before or after meal times (so that the Harbour Master has his teeth in).

The main thing about Fenit is the famous statue of the “Mermaid with the Big Boobies”.

The Mermaid

12 May

To Kilrush

An easy trip (by sea … in a boat).

Kilrush marina is cleverly hidden up a dredged channel behind an island (called “Scattery Island”) in a creek (called “Kilrush Creek”), a little way up the mighty River Shannon (which is full of dolphins). 

This is a pukka marina with mechanically operated lock gates.  

To get in: 

1. Call the marina on Ch 80.  The outer gates will open.   

2. Motor confidently into the lock.  

3. Read and follow the lock gate operating instructions (nothing will happen).  

4. Await arrival of Simon (who is very nice and who is also in charge).  Simon will make you very welcome and will also press some different (concealed) buttons and the gate will open.   

5. Find your allocated berth and park with bows facing to the west.

We very much like Kilrush and its marina  and Simon who made us very welcome and later gave us a  

lift to Shannon Airport (for a quick trip home to Blighty).

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

Dartmouth to Newlyn

24th April 2019

Ireland here we come!  But first Devon, Cornwall and all that.

We left Kingswear visitors'  pontoon at 1140 (sharp), thus managing to ensure that the tide was generally adverse most of the way to Fowey. I wont bore you (Dear Reader) with any of the exciting technical problems that arose on the trip. Suffice it to say that we arrived in Fowey where we worked out a cunning plan how to avoid Hurricane Hannah.

Our plan was startlingly simple in its simplicity:
We would hide up the Fowey whilst Hannah wizzed past.
We soon worked out that it  would be even more fun if we got on a train and nipped over to Penzance to  stay with my sister Angela whilst Hannah was around.  Train travel, it turned out, was much quicker than marine navigation and didn't require any knowledge of tidal steams.

28th April

To Falmouth!
We made it to Falmouth.

Martin and Julie visited which was nice.  They looked well.

29th April

To Newlyn.

After a last minute decision to go around the Lizard despite being nearly 2 hours late for the "tidal gate" we went anyway  and suffered no ill consequences despite passing only a mile and a half south of the point.  There was no wind. We motored all the way.

Next:  To Ireland, probably.