We had taken refuge in Larne lough for the night. It was great of the boys from the East Antrim boat club, to let us have the mooring. There was a south going tide quite early that morning so we dropped the strop from the mooring and passed the ferries on the way out. They looked quite striking in the early morning light, but it was soon time to get the sails up, for a sail down to Carrickfergus.
When we arrived at Carrickfergus marina, it was a cracking day, far too nice to do any work, so I decided that I would mess about. So for my mess, I took one of our dog ropes out of the locker and tied sections of it together to make big loops. I then tied the loops onto our two boat hooks. Next, I got one of our buckets out and made a bubble and water mix. I then took my messiness upstairs into the cockpit. Beverley very wisely suggested that I take my messiness down onto the pontoon, which I did. Soon I was blowing big huge bubbles. They looked fantastic as they blew around the marina. Beverley had to have a go too and she managed to blow a big huge bubble before it popped.
The next day, we worked in the morning with Beverley doing a video, while I did some work for some clients. Later on that day, we put on our glad rags so that we could see Beverley's mum, then we were meeting up with some people who we had met at the marina. It has to be said that Beverley is the more chatty of the two of us, when Beverley walks around a marina she will have at least five or six conversations. She is just that kind of girl, while I will have maybe two or three. I will talk to people, just not as much as Beverley. It was good that day having a light lunch on board with Beverley's Mum and her Aunt. Then as soon as we had seen them off we went to see Tamsin and Dave who we had met in Scotland and who you will probably meet when we get down to Cornwall.
The next day it was time to get the sails up for a short sail over to Bangor marina. We could get a deal there of half price berthing for five days, because we own a TransEurope card, it also has a great chandler.
Bangor marina has 5 gold anchors, which means that it is a great marina, and there are lots of reasons that it deserves every one of them
- Good disabled access
- Good recycling facilities
- Bathrooms on top of the shower facilities for both men and women - By the way the mens' bathroom is huge and includes a nappy changing facility, which I think is great.
- Really friendly staff who man the place 24/7
- Good quality pontoons, although I have complained about the size of the cleats, they need to be bigger
- The other good feature about Bangor marina is lots of ladders, fire extinguishers and other safety equipment dotted around the marina
One of the jobs that I did was do all the washing of sheets and stuff like that, as later on we would be having guests aboard. When we have guests Beverley and I have decided that we will let our guests have the v-birth as we are quite happy in the pilot bunks.
Once, we had sorted out those jobs it was back over to Carrickfergus, where we had arranged to meet up with our friend Karen.
She arrived quite early, so we set sail that day back to Bangor. When we were starting the engine up, we filmed us starting as we have had some issues starting the Lass of late, because we were filming, she started beautifully. So it was time once again to put the sails up and cross Belfast Lough, back to Bangor where we still had a few nights at half price.
