A final video from the Caledonian Canal

 

We've just finished editing some video and photos from the Caledonian Canal so here's the link -it's a 10-minute film, hope you enjoy it:

https://youtu.be/1bECnEI16KM

A new video - sailing in Orkney

We're back home and struggling a little with the combined effects of Covid and the hot weather. The lawns are parched brown and the ground is rock hard.

The village church with the graveyard parched brown

Looking south past the house - it'll be a good harvest for grain, at least.

Still, the lack of energy to attempt anything too strenuous has given Graham the opportunity to do some editing of video that we shot up in Orkney.

Here's the link: https://youtu.be/MO9MnKTLmcI

The End of the Cruise

 

The final 258nm passage back to Dartmouth was fast and eventful - we completed it in 39 hours. A perfect beam reach across the Irish Sea saw us pass north of the Isles of Scilly at 09.00 on Saturday and we then turned to port, hoisted the Parasailor and had a great day's run east, passing very close to Wolf Rock lighthouse, south of Land's End.

We enjoyed several dolphin convoys and even had a pilot whale pop up alongside us. Di was still pretty exhausted from her Covid but was able to do short watches to allow Graham to get some much-needed sleep but, to be honest, tiredness meant that the skipper's decision-making process wasn't as sharp as it could have been. The sensible thing to do would be to drop the Parasailor before dark and continue under white sails but we were lulled by the moderate breeze and excellent progress into keeping it up. Of course, the wind built substantially more that forecast so we had a very high speed sail in up to 22 knots of wind.

We decided that it would be safest to wait till first light to drop the sail and Constance our amazing autopilot did an excellent job to keep us on course. However,  sailing much faster than planned, we arrived at the tidal gate of Start Point about 2 hours too early and had to fight a 2-3 knot adverse current which also built up the seas. It would have been much more sensible to be under more easily-controlled white sails, with the option to heave-to (effectively parking the boat with the sails opposing each other) to wait for the tide. Ah, well, we never stop learning, and that experience is salted away as reference for future passages!

Anyway, by 07.00 on Sunday we were safely back on our home mooring and retired to our bunks for a few hours. 

On Monday morning Graham, still testing negative but feeling tired with the onset of a head cold, masked up as a precaution, took the train back to Taunton. In a completely full carriage of 92 seats he was the only person wearing a mask which goes a long way to explaining the recent peak of the Ba5 variant; roughly 1 in 17 people in England are currently infected, according to the Zoe Covid Survey, so statistically you'd expect 5 people in that carriage to be positive.  Anyway, a taxi ride completed the journey back to Kilve to collect the car, which started first time (we love that Subaru!). By the time he got back to Dartmouth, though, he was feeling distinctly ropey so took another test.

So, a full 6 days after Di first tested positive he now has Covid and is feeling pretty rough. The timing could have been a lot worse, however - if the symptoms had kicked in on passage we'd have probably had to divert to Scilly or Falmouth to rest at anchor for a few days.

Apart from the Covid ending , it's been an amazing cruise, even if the weather in Scotland and Orkney was distinctly poor. Overall we sailed 1936nm at an average speed of just over 6 knots and, as always, our faith and trust in Maunie was never shaken.

A final note from the First Mate (as is tradition).......the skipper should not beat himself up for the Parasailor decision. To look after a very 'under the weather' crew, sail Maunie, take on extra watches and everything else was pretty incredible. Yes, we'll both learn from the experience but, as ever, Graham's skills as a skipper are unquestionable.

An Update from Isolation Cove

 

A quick update from our isolation anchorage at Courtmacsherry (or Courtmac, as we locals call it). We've had calm weather and, this morning, a beautiful sunrise and we've had time to rest and recover over the past three days. 

Maunie's new home

The anchorage at low tide, looking towards the mouth of the estuary

Sunrise this morning

As we approach spring tides, we have a rise and fall of nearly 3m but our Bahamian mooring has kept us perfectly spaced between the local moorings. The estuary is deceptive, though, and arriving near high water you could easily be fooled into thinking there is deep water where, in reality, shallow sand banks lurk to snag the keels of the unwary. We saw it happen last night when an incoming yacht strayed too far to starboard of the channel and ended up having an uncomfortable few hours on the mud.

The yacht heeling over as the water drains away

Luckily for them there was no wind and the water was completely calm so no damage was done, other than to pride.

Dianne has been feeling pretty groggy but has managed to catch up on sleep so is feeling a lot better, though she's certainly not fully recovered yet. Graham, somehow, is still testing negative for Covid so his being banished to the aft cabin seems to have worked so far.

So we've decided that we'll set off this afternoon for a 40-hour passage to Dartmouth. Di's well enough to keep watch though isn't up to anything too strenuous. Thankfully, the weather looks as good as it's going to get for us - the shipping forecast gives the wind as SW Force 3-5 (which means we'll be reaching, the fastest and most comfortable point of sail) and the sea state is mainly slight.

Departing Courtmac at 15.00 today,  we should reach Land's End around 18.00 tomorrow and, hopefully, a large blue spinnaker will be involved!

Our passage plan is such that the tide will then turn in our favour to take us past Lizard Point and on towards Dartmouth. The next 'tidal gate' (where adverse strong currents would be a challenge if we get the timing wrong) will be Start Point, just west of Dartmouth, so we'll aim to get there around 06.00 on Sunday, just as the tide turns in our favour.

That's the plan, at least. We hope that it'll all work out nicely and we'll be back on our home mooring by mid-morning on Sunday.

It was all going so well, until Covid struck

 

"The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley" - Robert Burns

We looked at the shipping forecast yesterday morning and decided that a sea state of 'moderate to rough', combined with the wind directly behind us, would be a recipe for a very uncomfortably rolly sail to the Isles of Scilly. With a much more friendly wind and wave combination forecast for the end of this week, we decided that a few more days in Ireland would be a great idea.

This turned out to be fortuitous decision because Dianne had a very sleepless and feverish night last night and has tested positive for Covid this morning (Graham has tested negative, for the moment at least). Had we been at sea, as originally planned, she just wouldn't have been able to stand a night watch and would have had an even more miserable night.

We have therefore decided that self isolation at anchor rather,  than staying in a busy marina, would be a good idea so this afternoon, while Dianne returned to her bunk, Graham sailed (well, motored, in flat calm) Maunie around the Old Head of Kinsale to Courtmacsherry.

Old Head of Kinsale lighthouse

Courtmacsherry is a little holiday town, approached along a narrow river channel between shallow mud banks.

There is a small visitors' pontoon here but we decided that, in our infectious state,  we should stay away from other yachts so found a fairly small space to anchor amongst the moorings on the south side of the channel. The current runs quite quickly here and the boats all change direction with the incoming and outgoing tide so we've set up what's known as a Bahamian Mooring, using two anchors:

To achieve this, you drop and anchor as normal, then let out extra chain to allow you to lower the second anchor over the stern. You then pull back in on the first anchor chain to position the boat roughly equidistant between the two anchors. Finally, you shackle a block (pulley) to the first anchor chain and run the second anchor rope through it and pull it tight. When the tide changes, the boat swings around but stays pretty much in the same position, rather than drifting down into the neighbouring moorings as would happen if we just relied on one anchor. We're glad to report that it seems to have worked really well.

So our new plan is to hang here for a couple of days to see how we are feeling. Hopefully we'll still be ok to sail back to Dartmouth at the weekend but, of course, social distancing on a 38ft boat is tricky so Graham fully expects to test positive soon and, being a man, will of course have it much worse.

  

Irish Coastal Cruising - and Going Through the Motions

 

Our time in Howth, waiting for the wind direction to change to a more friendly direction, gave us the opportunity to take the 30-minute DART train into Dublin for a day's sight-seeing. Unfortunately we picked the hottest day in Dublin for 135 years (33.2 degrees C) so a rain-starved city with no shortage of bars but, apparently, not enough toilets smelled chiefly of impatience. There was a lot of litter around, too, and the streets were full of foreign tourists - which included ourselves, we suppose. Anyway, despite this, we enjoyed walking through Trinity College, found a great cafe away from the tourist hot spots for a light lunch, had the obligatory overpriced pint of Guinness in Temple Bar and climbed aboard the Jeanie Johnston.

This is a replica of a famous Famine Ship. According to Wikipedia, "The original made her maiden voyage from Blennerville in Tralee, Co. Kerry to Quebec in Canada in 1848 with 193 passengers on board. She carried 2,500 Irish emigrants on 16 transatlantic voyages to North America throughout the Famine years.

On average, the length of the transatlantic journey was 47 days. The most passengers she ever carried was 254, from Tralee to Quebec on 17 April 1852. To put this number in perspective, the replica ship is only licensed to carry 40 people including crew.

Despite the number of passengers, and the long voyage, no crew or passenger lives were ever lost on board the Jeanie Johnston. This is generally attributed to the captain, James Attridge, not overloading the ship, and the presence of a qualified doctor, Richard Blennerhassett, on board for the passengers."

The replica was commissioned in the 1990's and was designed to meet all the latest safety standards, including watertight bulkheads, fire suppression systems and high-tech engines and generators, but the complex project was dogged by delays and overspends. The original cost had been projected at £4.26m sterling (~€5.8m) in 1993 and the final cost was just under 14 million Euro in 2002, funded by the Government, the EU and various sponsors. The final figure included the seagoing ship, shipyard, workshops and visitor centre at Blennerville, cost of launch, fit out at Fenit and the cost of training in shipbuilding skills to some 50 unemployed young people. 

Her life as a working sail training vessel was very short and by mid-2010 the decision was made to operate the ship as a museum on the river because she was no longer in seagoing condition. In 2011, significant water damage was discovered, but repair work wasn't carried out until three years later due to lack of funding to dry dock the vessel.

According to a valuation obtained by Kerry County Council in 2002, the Jeanie was then worth 1.27 million Euro. In 2015, she was valued at 150,000 Euro, a pretty spectacular rate of depreciation! The tour was interesting, to learn some of the history of the Famine exodus, but it was really sad to see the beautifully built replica slowly falling apart due to lack of funding.

Di at the helm. Note the woodwork crying out for new varnish

On Wednesday, the wind finally moved to the NW so we left Howth at 04.00 to catch the south-bound tide. Along the coast are a series of shallow sandbanks, some with only a couple of metres of water covering them, so we navigated inside them and completed a very easy 41nm passage to the little port of Arklow. 

Arklow was lovely except for two, related, issues. First, there's a huge, 140-million euro project underway to build a new sewage processing plant for the town so the place reverberated to the sound of pile-driving and drilling. Second, and the reason for the project, is that raw sewage is currently just released into the river, with one of the out-falls being just a few metres from our pontoon berth. After days of no rain here, the river flow was very slow so the place just stank. Such a shame as the town itself was quite attractive and the Harbour Master very friendly and welcoming. However, until the sewage works is completed (In September 2025!) you don't so much berth in Arklow, as go through the motions. Another early start the following morning saw us happy to leave.

The northerly breeze allowed us to sail just outside the sandbanks near the busy ferry port of Rosslare but inside Tuskar Rock at the SE tip of Ireland. With strong tidal flows, this corner is a very dangerous place to be in strong south-westerly winds but we flew the spinnaker for a couple of hours and had a very gentle rounding of the corner.

Flying the Parasailor, dead downwind, with two poles for stability in the slightly rolly sea

Our next destination was a fishing village called Kilmore Quay which has a mildly challenging, dredged channel approach but an excellent, sheltered harbour with a small marina.

Most of the big fleet of fishing boats were tied up in port when we arrived, making navigating past them in the narrow entrance a little interesting. Nicky the Harbour Master told us that they are currently being paid up to 82,000 euro per boat for a month to remain ashore due to fishing quotas. 

Our final Irish coastal passage saw another 04.30 start to head west to Kinsale, an 81nm, 13-hour passage in very little wind so the engine ran for most of the way. 

Kinsale will be our final port in Ireland and it's a great place to visit. It's a huge sailing centre and the self-styled Gourmet Capital of Ireland, so is very popular with visiting boats. Too popular, it transpired, because we discovered that all three marinas were fully booked and we were lucky to get a last-minute cancellation in Castlepark Marina. Normally we'd have happily anchored in the river but the weekend weather was forecast to be wet and windy (and the forecast has come true!).

The final approach into Kinsale

Castlepark Marina is a 30-minute walk via the road bridge into town, but we were very glad to have its shelter

The C17 battery of Fort James at the tip of the promontory 

It transpired that we would have very good protection in the marina as our neighbour is an Irish Customs cutter. We were boarded by two Customs officers once we'd tied up so the boat was given a fairly cursory search by one while the other took all of our details in a process that reminded us of our time in New Zealand and Australia.

The most important reason for coming to Kinsale was that our goddaughter Belle is working over here and so we had a lovely long lunch with her in town yesterday.

Tomorrow the brisk south-westerlies swing round to the north-west, a perfect direction for us to sail for Falmouth (with an option to stop in the Isles of Scilly if we feel like it).

The wind direction looks good, we just hope that the sea state isn't too rough after a couple of days of strong winds.

Falmouth is about a 27-hour sail from here and we need to plan our departure to reach Land's End and Lizard Point at the right moment for favourable tides. We'll report on our progess in a couple of days' time.

Into Ireland

 

Howth Marina at Low Water

The passage south from Islay went perfectly, though the 3.30am alarm clock call wasn't greeted with huge enthusiasm. Once we set sail, though, we had excellent beam-reaching sailing and our Orkney Tides Masterclass seems to have paid off; we picked up the fast-flowing, south-going tide off Rathlin Island and carried it all the way south.

The wind began to falter as we came in to the lee of the land but we decided to continue on to Bangor, completing the 63nm passage in just over 9 hours.

After an overnight stop in Bangor, it was another relatively early start for the 89nm passage down to Howth, just north of Dublin. Again we had good tidal assistance but slightly fickle winds so there was a mix of sailing and motor-sailing, with about 15 dolphins coming to join us for 20 minutes on route.

Our 7.00pm arrival in Howth was about 90 minutes before Low Water and we called the Howth Yacht Club on the VHF for advice on water depths. The very helpful chap who responded explained that the harbour has silted up and it'd be marginal as to whether we'd get in. He advised that we should either wait at anchor for about 3 hours (for the rising tide) or else 'have a good run at it!'. The silty mud is very soft so we reckoned that the worst that could happen would be us sliding to an ignominious halt in full view of all the locals watching from the Yacht Club terrace.

We're glad to report that we made it to our marina berth, though for the last 100m the depth-sounder showed only 1.5m of water and Maunie draws 1.8m! We ploughed a neat furrow through the silt thanks to our momentum and a healthy dose of engine power. At full low-tide we could see just how silted the harbour has become:

The entrance to Howth Harbour. The old lighthouse is no longer functional but is still inhabited

The final approach to Howth marina. The Yacht Club is the blue and white roofed building

The marina at Low Water - most of the boats have their keels stuck in the soft mud

Howth is a busy fishing port but also a seaside town for Dubliners, connected to the city by a frequent 30-minute DART train service. The Yacht Club is the largest in Ireland and has a competitive racing fleet. There's a fleet of one-design wooden boats called Howth 17's which race twice a week; most of them are about 110 years old.

We've been here for a few days while the winds have blown steadily from the south and the temperatures have risen. Our trip into Dublin yesterday coincided with the hottest day recorded in 135 years - 33.1 degrees in the city - but nevertheless we enjoyed seeing the place. It was, however, crowded with foreign tourists (that category includes us, we suppose), it seemed strewn with litter and, after several days of no rain, a city with thousands of bars and not enough public toilets smelt chiefly of impatience.

Talking of which, we're impatient to get moving again. The heatwave will end today with the welcome (for us) switch to northerly winds so we'll head off tomorrow morning for the little harbour in Arklow, about 40nm further south. After that we'll probably head on to Kilmore Quay, at the very SE corner of Ireland to plan the 130nm crossing to the Isles of Scilly.