Dublin

Rob and I returned early morning Sunday from Skoma. WE slid through Jack sound in the half light and then a nice 18 to knt up wind sail in relatively flat water back to Milford haven to drop Rob off and pick up Mark Healy for the onward Journey to the Clyde.
Rob had a long and slow journey on the train back to Cardiff 20 stops and 4 hours.
Mark and I had connected on Crewseekers, un fortunately Rob was un able to do this section. He had a day skipper certificate and had chartered in Greece a couple of times. Marked turned up on time in perfect sunny weather with a big smile and we set off Dale bay from the Marina. I hadn’t told Mark the new plan yet!!. Originally we were to do a short hope to Wexford, meet Paul Wingate our new Crew and meander our way up the coast towards the Mull of kintyre. There were North winds forecast for 10 days and only one day with some east in it. The new plan, Hop to Howth in one go and meet Paul there. This left Mark with 120nm sail on day one and some night sailing to boot. As he said not as advertised.
An early set off from Dale, with the tide. By the time we passed Ramsey Island we were doing 10kts over the ground with full sail and blue skys. This was looking good. We continued north using the best of the tide then headed out onto coarse for Howth as the tide backed down. We only saw a couple of ships on route and we could see the distant loom of Dublin as the sun finally went down. The wind was flicking between 10 and 25 kts from the east, with a moderate large swell making sail choices quite tricky. As we were passing Dublin with a view to go through the channel into Howth at night. decided, that surfing in there late at night and a bit tired wasn’t going to be a good plan. We were now going to go to Dublin main shipping terminal and tie up at Pool Beg yacht club. This meant a 10 mile almost dead down wind and swell sail crossing the main shipping lane not Dublin. Not ideal but better than Plan A. We arrived outside Poolbeg at 2 am with a 25 kt on pontoon breeze, in amongst multiple container ships. Parking was going to be tricky and sleeping probably even more tricky. After loading every fender we own on the port side we managed t get along the outside of the low concrete, unprotected pontoon and tie up. Marks first words after that were. Brutal, nt what he had expected after mostly Greek sailing holidays 18 hours and 120 miles later we were all tied up and ready for a bumpy noisy nights sleep.

All to soon. The redirected Paul was nocking on the hull as his flight fromGlasgow was bang on time. Paul was cheery and flexible and realised we were both a bit tired . After a cup of tea and some breakfast and showers at the club, we were ready to explore Dublin. Paul and spent a fair bit of time in Dublin on business and was the guide for the day. Paul was a more experienced navigator using mostly restaurants as waypoints, which meant we would ways be eating well.Read more