Two go Sailing

After a day spent exploring the pretty village of Kilmore Quay in the sunshine we slipped our lines just as dawn was breaking on the last day of meteorological summer for the 70 mile passage to Milford Haven on the Welsh coast. The forecast was for very light winds and sunny intervals so we were not expecting to sail that much - and that proved to be the case. What little wind there was (and several times our wind instrument registered 0 knots) was from directly behind us topping out at about 7k which is not even enough to fill our big light downwind sail. We also needed to keep our speed up to at least 5knots over the ground or we would risk being swept too far south by the tide and end up clawing our way back up the coast against the tide after a long day at sea - so we were set for a long motor. The weather was as predicted and we had a beautiful crossing with blue skies and sunshine. We spotted several tell tale dolphin fins and seals popped up to have a look at us but other than...

Arklow is a "no nonsense" sort of place! You know where you are, the High Street is functional with the usual shops and more than enough pubs to keep every visitor well watered! Across the road from the river pontoon is a large shopping centre with a glossy floor high windows and the usual high street names and beside it a large Aldi - so stocking up the boat was easy. We were there over a weekend so all of the pub/restaurants were offering some sort of live music - which was fun but a bit noisy! In general we found that it was expensive to eat out in ROI however when you did the quantity of food given was huge - so does that make it expensive or good value? In many cases I would have been happy with the kids portion but sadly I didn't qualify! I also continued my research into the quality of Guinness in ROI and can definitively say that it does taste much better in Ireland than in England. Theories as to why this should be vary but I think it is something to do with tran...

After a couple of days in Howth the weather looked much better and so we decided to move on to Greystones about 20 miles south the other side of Dublin Bay. Early on in our  visit across the Irish Sea it became apparent that not many folk answer their VHF here so we decided to phone the HM at Greystones to check berthing availability. The HM was very helpful but said that he could only accommodate us for one night instead of our planned two as we had chosen the weekend of the Greystones Regatta and over 100 boats were expected to arrive in the small marina and he only had 40 vacant berths! We left Howth around lunchtime to catch the ebb tide across Dublin Bay and on down the coast past Bray and on to the little harbour at Greystones. As we were preparing to leave the lifeboat was called out and we saw her leave  the harbour at full speed. The coxswain of the Howth lifeboat is also the marina manager so very soon everyone knew that they were on their way to rescue a yacht who...