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.

Iam ver hiemem interrupta navigabant

Yes indeed, Sailing was interrupted by winter but now it is spring.

First, the lift out...............

On Monday 28th January, we puttered up to Galmpton Creek to be lifted out.  I manoeuvred Albatross into the slings, the crane's engine roared, I turned off our (almost new) engine and we were lifted into the air. We disembarked and Albatross was towed into the boat park.for jet washing.

25 minutes after we had left the water, someone pointed out that THERE WAS SMOKE COMING OUT OF ALBATROSS' EXHAUST.

Panic.  I grabbed a ladder and rushed on board. The engine, my new shiny engine, was still running. I hadn't stopped it, when I thought I had.  I did now.

Gingerly I peeked into the engine compartment, expecting to be hit by a wall of heat and destruction.  The engine looked fine. Not even that clinking sound of overheated metal.

"Let it cool down and sort it out tomorrow" someone said.

We went home. How stupid could I be? What an idiot.  A new engine ruined?

The wisdom was that I would need a new water pump, a new head gasket, possibly a new heat exchanger, a new exhaust elbow and exhaust pipe.  The muffler/ water trap (which is made of high density polyethylene (aka "plastic"), and retails at about £200) would have melted.  Basically, if you run a water-cooled marine engine without any water-cooling for 25 minutes you might as well throw it away and get a new one.

The engine, it  turned out was fine.   The cooling pump impeller had lost 3 of its 6 fins. Otherwise everything was fine.  Bloody Hell.

Winter maintenance now started in earnest.
We had a long list of essential repairs.
Inevitably, 6 weeks later (when we were due to be lifted back in) hardly any of these essentials had been repaired.  However, Jean had polished the topsides so beautifully that briefly I became "the owner of the boat with the beautifully polished topsides" rather than "that idiot who left his engine running for 25 minutes after he was lifted out of the water".

I did paint Albatross' bottom and realign the engine and prop shaft and even attempted to stop the stern gland from leaking but, all in all (as usual), we failed in our quest to make her like new again.

Monday 11th March.
We were lifted in and puttered back to our temporary winter mooring in Kingswear.

Wednesday 27th March.
A 200 metre voyage (without charts) back to our permanent mooring proceeded without crisis.

Friday 28th March.
Sails on and almost ready for summer.

Next time "Hibernia fatisque vocantia", and why I've been practising my Latin.

2019 beckons

So this is our Big Plan for 2019.

Ireland.

Ireland clockwise (by sea).

We will set off in early May and get back (with a bit of luck)  at the end of July

We hope to start from Dartmouth thence to Plymouth to Newlyn and then to Ireland.  From then on it's simply a matter of keeping the Emerald Isle on our right (starboard) and not hitting anything till we get back to Blighty.

As usual we welcome (seaworthy) guests for parts of the trip.
Possible crew change places include:
Dartmouth, Plymouth, Newlyn, Cork, Tralee, Galway,Westport, Sligo, Derry, Coleraine, Belfast and Dublin.

Jean and I plan to do three 3 week voyages with two fortnight-long breaks in between so that we can get back to feed Putin (the doglike creature at home) and cut the grass.

More news to follow

Gratuitously irrelevant Zebras

And then we went home

25 August

To Brighton

No dramas.
Martin went home by train, and we popped back to Essex to cut the grass and feed Putin (who was fine). 
Travel on land using legs, trains, buses and the occasional taxi is remarkably easy.

28 August

To the Solent.

Leaving Brighton (by boat) does involve  .. well  .. leaving the marina by the marina entrance. 
The entrance can get shallow, especially after storms and does, we understand, require regular dredging.  As we wanted to leave at low water springs, I checked with the man in the marina office that it would be deep enough for us.

Whilst examining the results of a recent survey, he suggested that "it should be OK, especially if you go a little wide here, and more in the middle here, and perhaps go out on  a rising tide, but it  might be better to give it another 2 hours".
So much for seeking reassurance. 

As I was now in extreme safety mode (we no longer had Martin aboard and I really didn't want to have to call Solent Coastguard again that week), we opted to leave an hour early, albeit on a falling tide.

It was fine.

There was no wind.  We motored swiftly to the Solent,  refuelled in Yarmouth, and then, having firmly agreed that we couldn't possibly get beyond Studland Bay that night, eventually arrived in Portland Harbour before dark. 78 miles, no problem.

30 August 2018

Portland to Dartmouth.

No problems  .. and we were home!

Being Rescued and all that

23 August 2018

To Eastbourne

The Hottest British Summer In Living Memory was coming to an end.
In fact, despite the predictions in a well-known scientific and medical journal (The Daily Express), the British Summer was already over.

This, of course, meant that we had to check the weather before venturing out onto the High Seas.

There appeared to be something of a "Weather Window" that morning, in that the Northerly wind would not turn Westerly till after noon. As we wanted to get from Dover to Eastbourne that day, a Northerly wind would mean we could sail (i.e. use the Big White Flappy Things) whereas a Westerly wind would mean that we would have to use the engine. (Tacking against he wind is not a concept or practice that we normally embrace because it is rather slow and tends to be hard work).

Anyway, we had a weather window, if we could leave Dover early enough, even if the tidal might not be quite ideal.

The gate from Granville Dock (Dover) opened for us at 0700 and we exited the harbour without causing any special inconvenience or damage to a very large and recently docked cruise liner or to Dover Port Control generally.
I  had just finished complimenting myself on our increasingly fluent use of the VHF and how easy the day had been so far when the plotter went out. The plotter then bleeped several times, told me it didn't know where it was, "position fix lost", rebooted several times, bleeped once more and then died. There was no smoke, but the plotter was definitely dead.

Never mind. We had Martin  and Martin had an Ipad.

The "weather window" was, of course, a fiction.  The Northerly was a Westerly and the F3 soon became an F5, occasionally F6.  We would have to motor to Eastbourne (or sail back to Dover and wait for a new "weather window").  I turned up the engine and bashed our way Westwards.

It got a little rough.  Never mind, we had Martin, a new engine and plenty of fuel.
I took a couple of Stugeron   "just in case"
At one stage we pitched so much coming off a wave that the propellor came our of the water with a roar and a splash.

We plodded on.

About six miles out from Eastbourne I rememeber thinking "so we are going to make it alright after all". 

At this precise moment the engine stopped.

"Obviously something round the prop" I said, trying to sound calm, authoriative, wise and generally in control (all at the same time).

I started the engine, engaged reverse and sighed with relief as it ran sweetly.

Off we chugged.   Ten seconds later it stopped again.

"Obviously dirt in the fuel filter"  I announced. "All that bouncing around must have stirred up some sludge in the bottom of the tank".  "I'll change the primary filter".

Having completely lost my temper with the aft cabin's mattress (which was determined to stop me from accessing the fuel filter), I did eventually manage to change the bl**dy thing.

Jean and I inspected the old "blocked" filter and some fuel that I'd drained into an ice cream tub.
Pristine.

The engine wouldn't run and the fuel and its filter were fine.

"We will have to sail".   I spoke these words knowing that on a sailing boat such as ours, this was very much the last resort.

Whilst we sailed, I convened a conference.  We made a plan.  Tack the boat under sail against the wind and tide towards Eastbourne Marina, when nearly there, ask for a workboat to help us into the lock, and "Bob's your uncle".

I called Eastbourne Marina on the VHF.  No reply.
I phoned Eastbourne Harbour. I think I got through briefly to someone in a pub, who managed to bang the phone down just before we were cut off.
I fiddled with the VHF.

Reader(s) will not remember anything much about the VHF ATIS settings required for Dutch Inland Waterways, however, I am able to recall that although I failed to program this properly, I did do enough for the ATIS setting to have disabled High Power transmissions  on various channels on the VHF (which is something that it's supposed to do and might perhaps be a good thing when navigating canals in Holland).

Why does stuff always go wrong at the worst time?
Have you ever tried re-programme a VHF, from the instruction book, on a rocking boat, with steamed up spectacles, while shining a flickering torch at an impossibly small screen on  the front of a VHF set?
Eventually, I had it working on full power Channel 74.

I called Eastbourne Marina.
Would they be able to assist our entry by providing a workboat?
How long would we take to get there?
A couple of hours.
Sorry, we'll have gone home by then.

I called Solent Coastguard on Channel 16 and explained the situation.
I explained that I wasn't confident of sailing into Eastbourne without help, Brighton Marina has an infamously difficult entrance, and Dover was an awful long way away.

Solent Coastguard were clear, calm, utterly professional and generally wonderful and quickly recruited another yacht to help us.  Soon a very shiny new-looking Beneteau 38 (or so) was motoring along behind us as we slowly approached Eastbourne Harbour.

This, I thought, was all very fine and dandy but  how were we going to make use of this fine yacht and her kind and helpful skipper?  Would our harbour entry end in a pile of damaged gel coat and twisted steel?

"Albatross, Solent Coastguard, over .."
"Albatross, Solent Coastguard.   Eastbourne Lifeboat are training this afternoon and would be pleased to assist you"
"Solent Coastguard, Albatross.  YES PLEASE!"

Twenty minutes later Three Million Pounds worth of RNLI's Tamar Class all-weather Lifeboat,  "Diamond Jubilee" roared out to meet us.  With great agility they put a member of crew aboard, a  rope was attached and we were taken in tow towards the harbour.  Having sorted out the towing bridle, the crewman bled our engine's the injector pipes and we entered Eastbourne Harbour Lock under our own "steam".

Our track as recorded on Martin's Ipad

We lived happily ever after.

God Bless The RNLI.

 RNLI's Tamar Class all-weather Lifeboat,  "Diamond Jubilee"