Guinness!

At the moment the weather is always against us - very strong winds in the wrong directions!  

So it was a wonderful relief to be able to sample some "proper" (i.e. Irish) Guinness in Carlingford last night after a long, trying week battling the elements.

The Antidote

In the last post, we were in Dunstaffnage Marina, waiting 2 days for the weather to improve.

A Lovely Backdrop

It's a good time to show you this special delivery we received from 5yr old Thomas, travelling with his parents on their 21'-9" Drascombe Cruiser, moored just ahead of us on the Caledonian Canal.  This was a thank-you to us after we charged his iPad.

"Rapport" by Thomas

At 06:15 on Wednesday 14th August, we finally cast off from Dunstaffnage and headed off to catch a fair tide through the maze of islands guarding the route south towards the Irish Sea.

We were trying to time our journey to reach the entrance to Cuan Sound, where the fierce tide would start to flow south after 10:30.  But as we often do, we arrived a bit early and had to counter the remnants of a contrary tide through the Cuan Narrows (doh!).

The wind was against us (naturally) and we were beating to get south but as it rose in strength, we raised our expectations and decided to make for Craighouse at the southern end of Jura.  

Tacking towards the Jura coastline

Strong, gusty winds required us to reef and then un-reef not long after as they died away again..  This pattern repeated itself all afternoon, testing Doug's patience and making him rather hot!

With the winds gusting up to 25 knots, we were grateful to navigate through the narrow entrance to the bay and tie up to one of the Craighouse visitor's moorings at 17:15.

The lovely Jura Mountains behind Craighouse

Time for a welcome supper on board, before setting out to battle the elements again tomorrow zzzz.

Next day, we decided to head for Port Ellen on the southern tip of Islay, just south of us.  Strong SSW head winds up to F6 were forecast but we reckoned we would gain some shelter from the land close in to the shore.

It was a long battle for the last half of the trip as we sailed into the choppy waters further south and the wind strength rose.  We arrived in Port Ellen at 17:30 and took a berth in the little marina before heading ashore for a very welcome seafood meal in the Islay Hotel.

Next day, we were off again at 10:50 to catch the start of the SE going tide through North Channel towards Northern Ireland.  We repeated the reef-in/reef-out exercise once again before finally deciding to call it a day and head in to the marina at Glenarm on the Antrim coast for the night, tying up at 18:45.  We had left Scotland and it felt that we were making good progress on our homeward journey!

The following day day, we set off at 05:50 to sail the 25 miles down the coast to Bangor Marina in Belfast Lough.  We arrived at 09:40 and decided to reward ourselves for this early start with a brunch ashore :)

After a welcome sleep (it's tiring sailing every day) we headed off early again at 04:50 to catch the tide with the aim of reaching Dublin Bay by nightfall.  

Sunrise in Belfast Lough

This should have been achievable in a reasonable time but the W wind never arrived and stayed stubbornly in the SW and having played with raising and lowering the No 2 Jib and repeatedly putting the mainsail reefs up to 2 then 1 then none, we decided we had had enough and changed course for Carlingford Lough and the marina on the Southern Irish bank for the night.

In the slightly rustic Carlingford Marina

with this sign on the only route ashore :)