We had left Kilmore Quay for the second time. Our first departure was not a success because, the swell was pretty heavy. The wind was strong because we had, had a storm the day before and the seas were still unsettled because of the winds. The wind was also pushing the sea towards St. Patrick's bridge and as water is incompressible, then the only thing that the sea could do was rise and create waves which is what we saw. On top of the large waves we had a thunderstorm and 26knots of wind on the nose. At which point Beverley said that she had had enough of this and turned the boat around. On the positive note, Beverley produced another video so we are now 4 weeks ahead as far as videos are concerned. This is great for us as there are times that we have very little reception, plus if you are sailing then it is very difficult to produce videos.
We were sailing at 5knots which is a very comfortable speed for us, with one reef in the main and 1½ reefs in the Genoa. Basically we had pulled the Genoa out as far as we could while not being blanked by the main. Now for various reasons we hardly ever just have one reef in the main, so seeing as we were reefed well with the sail tight on the boom, I marked our halyard with some markers to show the person pulling the halyard where 1 reef was. To be totally confusing, I marked the halyard with three lines, because although I was marking out the first reef, you have to pull out a lot of halyard to get to it, which is why we have:-
- 1 mark for three reefs
- 2 marks for second reef
- 3 marks for 1 reef and
- 4 marks for all out.
When you are pulling on the halyard, it makes sense, as the numbers go up in a sequence, its just a little confusing when you write it down.
We continued sailing even with the winds becoming lighter, all that happened was we rolled the Genoa in. It seams paradoxical that you roll the Genoa in, but the sail is heavy and light winds can not keep the sail out. With the lighter winds we knew that we would be heading for Dunmore East rather than Youghal which is where I wanted to go. We could easily reach Dunmore East while with Youghal we would be getting there close to midnight, which seamed too late for my liking.
As we were sailing we saw a pot marker with a flag, this is not as posh as France where they have AIS on their pots, but for us it was great as we could actually see where the pots were from ½ a mile away which is great. Pots with flags are quite common in the Waterford area, I just wish that was true elsewhere. If I could bring in a law it would be the use of flags on pots. I think it would really help yachts while helping the fishermen as they would not have yachts tangling in their lines. The other news was that it is starting to get warm now. Warm enough for Beverley to actually change her hat and put on her clipper hat. You never know, it might get warm enough that we might change out of our cold weather gear. At the moment I feel that will be a minor miracle, but we can always hope.
After we rounded Hook head, we sailed to Dunmore East and anchored just outside the harbour. It was great to turn off the engine and enjoy the silence. It was not quite silence because I could here the crows, but it was pretty good.
The next day, there was no wind and it was very sunny, so the boat batteries were fully charged by lunch time, this means that we can charge other equipment like the laptops and the drone as we hoped to get the drone up. Once everything was charged, we got the dinghy out for the first time this season and got prepared for going for a walk. By the time we actually got out, the fog had descended so the drone flying was out, so we just went for a walk around Dunmore East.
