Euroland time and a bit of culture

Knowing how wildly expensive UK electricity is, we were surprised to find that Ireland can more than compete with the UK marina power prices. We went big and speculated 10 Euros on power. Extravagant we know but we were in that kind of mood.

Sometimes you arrive in a place and discover that "stuff" is going on. Well, Dun Laoghaire was hosting a female world championship sailing event. Plenty of dinghies chasing around the inner harbour area and then being recovered into a compound. It seemed unfair that the competitors had to wheel their own boat on a launching trolley into their allotted place in the compound - for a world championship you'd hope that they had a few folks doing everything for them. You can see the procession here:

and in this little video clip too:

Inside the harbour, was a sad sight. Somebody had lost their pride and joy - or perhaps it was no longer their pride and joy and had been a bit neglected?

No matter what, still a very sad thing to see. At the same time the marina staff were trying to recover a RIB that had been launched that day, later on had a tube detach and started to sink. It was one of those days where we walked back to the boat and lifted a couple of boards in the engine room, just in case.

We mentioned "stuff going on". Well, we also learned that the Orange leader of Trumpistan was visiting Dublin that weekend and then going off to his golf course for the Irish open competition.  You can guess where his priorities lay. Thanks to that, we needed to avoid Dublin and instead we took the DART train to Malahide. That place reminded us of just how well the Irish look after their properties and towns compared to some of the sad scruffy towns in Scotland. Here is one of the famous pubs:

and their wine shop:

We had a plan to visit the castle and grounds. Walking up the drive we saw that some european T20 cricket was underway with more security staff than spectators and also how to tidy up the stump of a tree that had to be felled:

Pretty impressive stuff and there were more examples too.

The castle had a bunch of tourists (so unlike us of course) who needed a picture of themselves in front of it:

In fact, it was almost impossible to get an image of the castle without somebody doing the grinning for the camera thing. We must be way too old to understand the desire to be photographed in front of everywhere you visit. The tour guide had a typically Irish storytelling ability and used it to the full although his strong Dublin accent might have impeded the humour from being understood by a few non-native English speakers. That was a shame as he was very humorous. The castle had been occupied by one family for 800 years, quite something. To learn more, have a look at this weblink.

During the days when the nasty English persecuted Catholics and wanted to prevent their worship, the family had communion in this room and behind the panelling was the required Priest's hole so he could hide if the wrong people appeared:

The castle had been handed over to the local government folks 50 years ago - the usual story of how to pay death duties on the estate. They were celebrating this with some odd artworks (again, too old to appreciate some of them perhaps) and in the great hall there was this banner :

making the rather tenuous link to the Shirley Valentine film that is also 50 years old. Odd kind of connection or have we missed something obvious? 

The gardens were impressive, one of the family travelled extensively and brought back lots of unusual plants. They had also established a butterfly greenhouse with some spectacular specimens. Naturally you would see different ones on each visit as the poor creatures only live for up to two weeks in their lovely home:

We failed dismally capturing some in flight that had vivid blue wings. You will just have to believe us when we say it was quite a spectacle. After a happy few hours there, we walked down to the marina and spotted another Nordhavn laying there, a 60 that we'd been on whilst she was for sale with the Nordhavn Europe folks. They are getting about a bit....

Our Saturday plans were thwarted - we wanted to take the DART train south to Bray and discovered that there was nothing moving south of Dun Laoghaire for the entire day, some maintenance work. Trust us to pick the one day when the line was being totally closed for our visit. Instead we stayed in Dun Laoghaire and went to the maritime museum. Very glad that we did. We learned about a ship's captain who became famous for his cable-laying activities between Ireland and the Americas and were a bit worried about how sorting out your toe nails can end up:

A centrepiece of the museum is an old lighthouse lamp / lens assembly that still rotates on a bed of mercury (carefully sealed in so as not to kill the volunteer staff or the occasional regular visitor):

You can see that the building is not a modern museum construction. No, it was originally a Seaman's church, very apt. They had one display that would have been very handy when we had a navigation bulb fail in Bangor and a second new one turned out to be faulty:

Perhaps a bit clunky and hard to attach to our modern navigation light but the idea is pretty neat. The volunteers manning the museum were helpful and friendly. A most pleasant way to spend an afternoon and to get a little education about the seafaring history of Ireland. It seems that Irish captains were instrumental in setting up many of the countries' navies in South America. There was also the sad story of the loss of RMS Leinster, sunk by torpedoes one month and one day before the end of the First World War and reckoned to be the biggest loss of life in the Irish Sea. More info on that is in this Wikipedia link. Rather amusingly, they also had a "Titanic artefact" area. Seems that everyone needs to claim some connection to the ill-fated liner. This was the most tenuous exhibit we could imagine. A light bulb from Titanic that someone had liberated before her iceberg disaster.  A bit sad in comparison to the Belfast museum and the exhibits in Southampton.

Last time we were in the Dublin area by boat, we had a visit from some customs officers who clearly needed to show that they had checked some visiting foreign vessels. All they really wanted to do was record the official registration number (we are Part 1 registered, like the bigger commercial vessels) so they had some information for their log. They really didn't care about the VAT status etc, what stores we had on board, if we had any prohibited things from the UK etc. This time, no visit, a wonderful lack of officialdom compared to visiting other EU countries with the boat, thanks to the common travel area.

Bangor to Dun Laoghaire

Although we were very settled in Bangor, the reality of Autumn was kicking in. As usual, the weather forecast showed one very windy day, then a calmer one, Naturally, the following week showed calmish winds until it became the current week when things reverted to the two day cycle. Jam tomorrow and all that. This shows the  nice peaky nature of the weather - the top is wave height off Norn Iron and the lower bit wind strength and gusts. an autumnal pattern of low pressure systems was firmly established:

There wasn't a weather window long enough to do the 32 hour trip to South Wales (Milford Haven area), However, there was a bit of a break that would let us get to Dublin without having some nasty head seas. What was the downside - well, a very early start that would be a bit bumpy until things calmed down. The tides and winds did not want to play nicely together,  Ideally, we would leave Bangor at 3am. Only then it would be much rougher out to sea. So, we opted for 4am to let things calm down a bit.

Leaving well before daylight meant replying on the FLIR to spot pot markers so we fired it up to check all was well:

You get to see the temperature differences between the boat structures and guard rails very clearly (black-cold).The image was a bit blurry as you can see so the lens had a good clean ready for silly o'clock the next morning. A 3:30 am alarm was not ideal. Things were still a bit windy as we crept out at low water with not much depth under the keel. Here is how the "office" looked underway:

Heading between Donaghadee and the Copeland Islands you get some serious tidal streams that try hard to push the boat off course which is tricky as the channel isn't that wide or straight anyway. This shows the level of tidal help and it hadn't reached peak flow yet either:

10 knots over the ground, 6.5 though the water. Pretty good really, although the captain didn't spend too long enjoying it. He was busier making sure we stayed in the wet bit as the stream grabbed our keel and wanted us to go in directions that were not too safe. Once we passed the rather worryingly named Skullmartin and turned more to the SW, things started to calm down, with some messy wave patterns on the beam. The further we got from the land, the less shelter we had and the messier they got. The stabilisers won the battle though.

There were several clusters of fishing boats, some well clear of us:

Being a fish anywhere near that swarm of fishing boats was probably a guaranteed early demise. There was one particularly annoying inshore fishing boat that was dropping pots into the sea. He seemed to delight in changing course right in front of us to stress the crew who was at the helm. They probably enjoyed doing things that were basically unsafe and against all the collision regulations. We kind of hope that their pots were pretty empty.

The tides work in a collaborative way from Bangor down to Dublin. As you take the flood tide southwards, you meet a tide that has been running in the other direction pretty much as it changes. So, lots of tidal help which then drops off and picks up again in your favour. Up to 12 hours of help if timed nicely. It makes the trip way quicker - door to door our run took 14 hours after leaving at a less than optimal time. If we tried to do it against the tides, the Time Zero software calculated a 19 hour run and we think that is optimistic.

Here is the route for the 98 Nautical Mile trip:

As the wind dropped so did the sea state and the sun came out to join us too. It was a rather nice run down towards Dublin Bay until the wind shifted again to the SW (as forecast) and the clouds built just as we were approaching Lambay island, to the North of Howth:

At the entrance to Dublin Bay, you get to see Baily lighthouse:

only we were busy slowing down to allow a cargo ship to go into the bay ahead of us, through the shipping channel. We slowly kept going at around 1.200 rpm and 3 knots over the ground which felt pretty pedestrian as we just wanted to get there - tired folks on board by 5pm. We duly let the big guy pass us:

and headed across the bay towards Dun Laoghaire using the "approved" route. Only then the Dublin Vessel traffic Service called us on the radio to say that a dredger which had been pretty much stationary was about to head to the spoil ground to dump its load and they asked us to turn inland, following the cargo ship and then to turn astern of the dredger once it left the bay area. Being obedient folks we did so. Then we heard a call to the cargo ship to say their berth was not clear yet and there would be a 15 minute delay, they were asked to turn around and do a loop around the bay. Wonderful, sure enough we were called and asked to wait for them to turn and then go astern of them. Hence the odd track through the bay:

That added a fair bit of time to the trip, just when we didn't need it but such is life - the entrance to the Dublin docks is pretty manic in shipping terms. We finally entered Dun Laoghaire harbour, avoiding the yachts and dinghies that were racing and onto a pre-arranged berth. It was good to turn off the engine and electronics and contemplate dinner, after check-in at the office of course.

All in all not a bad run considering the weather conditions, the captain had to hose off plenty of salt spray but it really wasn't unpleasant at all. Despite Brexit having happened since our last visit here, we were still warmly welcomed and several local folks wanted to chat about the boat and where we'd been.  Nordhavns are still far from common and elicit lots of interest from yottie types.

Maintenance News:

The starboard navigation light refused to fire up which is just what we wanted at 3:45 am when we were getting ready to head off. The replacement bulb that lives in a handy drawer was fitted and it still did not work. This was very bad news. We discovered that the new spare bulb already had a broken filament, not what you expect or want. Especially as they are expensive little beasts being the higher powered versions. Luckily we keep 4 spares on board so we have a nice green light again.