Cork to Kinsale

After a week in the Royal Cork Yacht Club moorings (yes, we took advantage of the “deal”) the time and weather to head off had arrived. As the tide runs strongly through the marina berths and Andrew had to extricate Zephyros from a finger berth, he headed out at slack water and rafted onto us:

We then managed breakfast, cleaning ourselves up and a little shopping at the local Centra store. We met the nice RCYC lady who had told us when we arrived that “the first thing we learn is how to take money from people” again and she duly did so. Very very nicely of course.

Heading off around half tide, there was plenty of stream to help us off the hammerhead berth once we got a little angle across the tide with the keel. It was warm and sunny – a flybridge trip all the way. Lovely stuff.

The route to Kinsale runs close inshore, here is Zephyros approaching the Sovereign islands to give you an idea of the weather and views:

The rock formations along the coast were impressive too:

We passed the sloping Little Sovereign rock:

And then its big brother, the not too imaginatively named Big Sovereign:

Entering the Kinsale area, we managed to catch Zephyros up, so finally a picture that doesn’t show her bottom to the world:

There is a bar which is quite shallow before you get to the town. We planned to arrive around low water firstly to take advantage of a fair tide along the coast and secondly to be berthing when there is little stream running through the pontoons at Kinsale. This meant crossing the bar with not too much water to spare as we passed the ruined Charles Fort:

and the lovely Summercove area with the horrible gaudy pub. Orange buildings in the republic of Ireland on the day the Battle of the Boyne is celebrated “up north”?

Paul the Kinsale harbour moorings man was brilliant. We had called as instructed to arrange a berth and because we were planning a week or so there, he arranged finger berths for both boats and rang us with the numbers too. Lovely friendly guy, very organised. We became a bit of a floor show in the harbour, even though Dirona a Nordhavn 52 (stretched version of our boat) had been in earlier this year after a trip across from the USA. They have a far more interesting blog with lots of ocean voyages and proper stuff in it. They take it seriously rather than our sideways look at the world. Have a look at Dirona Blog for proper ocean voyages and informed opinion on things nautical. Don't bother with these ramblings any more.

Anyway, having wriggled backwards onto the berth we felt part of the furniture. Kinsale is the foodie capital of the area and a wander around the town revealed more restaurants per square mile then we have seen in a while (bar Gunwharf Quay in Portsmouth perhaps – however, these are all individual proper places, not chains!)

To summarise, a lovely trip, great scenery, another Nordhavn to admire en route, calm seas. What more could you wish for? So far the only drawback of the Kinsale Yacht Club is the shorepower. Any load on the system and the voltage dies dramatically as you can see:

For the benefit of the Americas readers who have to struggle along with 110v and lots of Hertz, we should get 220-240 volts. The 11.0 is the amps drawn, not the voltage! Guess what, the microwave is slow.

The collective noun for Nordhavns (see Falmouth post):

Well, so far the worst suggestion has come from trolley shopper Bob. He proposed "a rash". Come on guys, you can do better than that. We expect better ideas especially from the 200 plus Russian readers that we seem to have accumulated recently. As a hint, Putin and the thought police might not be too interested in this topic so you could send us your ideas. Of course, you could be KGB staff keeping an eye on us as potential subversives in which case we have no idea why you bother.

For all real readers, please send your collective noun ideas using the comments button below asap.