Current location: Dingle Marina
Places visited since last post: Castletownberehaven, Dunboy Cove, Derrynane, Portmagee
It has been a sad day on board Snow Goose today as we had to bid farewell to one of our most trusty crewmembers, Jack. I know that we have not mentioned Jack at all thus far, but he was such a trusty and integral part of the crew that this now seems a huge omission. There are three living souls on board - myself, Angus and Eloise, plus two extra crew-members who require no food or bunks, but are crucial in helping us to steer the boat. We fondly refer to them as Susan and Jack (as in "Lazy Susan" and "Lazy Jack").Jack is the electronic tiller arm which follows a compass course for us when we are motoring, and Susan is the wind vane self steering (requiring no battery power), holding us on a wind angle when there is enough wind to sail. Jack had been intermittently unwell for a while, but for the past week or so had become very unhappy so we had put him on bed rest until we reached a port where there was someone who could take a look at him for us. A marine electrician came to have a look at Jack today, deemed him possibly terminal, and has taken him away "to hospital" as Eloise calls it. His friend who is an engineer is going to see what we can do, and we are hoping to be re-united with Jack somewhere up the coast if he can be cured. Meanwhile we will have to start teaching Eloise to steer a compass course!
Actually, Eloise is very keen on steering and likes to practice as much as possible. Mainly, she likes to do this by sitting on top of the tiller and swaying from side to side, singing "Horsey, horsey, don't you stop..". As you can imagine, we try and encourage her to to most of her steering practice when we are moored up. She is capable of lots of other things on board the boat now, too. There is nothing like the sponge-brain and enthusiasm of an almost-three-year-old for rapid learning. Her favourite job is pulling the red piston to stop the engine, and then scuttling beneath the chart table to turn off the engine battery. She also likes to help pump up the dinghy, which requires both feet and her full body weight on the pump, so she tires quickly and is a long way from being a significant help in the dinghy pumping department. Her washing-up, too, is coming on in leaps and bounds, and the layout of the boat means that she can stand on the seat in the saloon, opposite the main washer-upper, and reach the sink easily, wielding her own brush and sponge. This results in a great deal of extra fairy liquid being used, and a lot more water merrily poured around the outside of the sink, but she insists that when she is three she will be big enough to wash up by herself. She also likes to don her "torch head" as she calls it, and get her head right into the engine to help Angus with checks, although mainly she just follows the beam of her torch around as she waggles her head. She has also taken to shooshing us to listen to her "weather forecasts", the funniest of which was "If you don't like the weather in Ireland, wait five minutes". (This was an exact repetition of a joke told at an after-dinner speech when we were in Kinsale two weeks ago; we have no idea how she suddenly reproduced it..) Her other key job is assisting in the filling of the water tank, which we do every week or so. She adores this job as she usually is left in sole charge of the boat end of the hosepipe, which I have carefully led into the open water tank in the middle of the saloon, while I go back to the tap to turn it on. Needless to say, by the time I get back on to the boat, there is water splashing everywhere as she holds the gushing hosepipe high above the tank, waving it from side to side, and squealing with delight at the mess she is creating.
So now you are clear about Jack, Susan and Eloise's roles, it seems wrong to proceed without a brief description of what Angus and I do on board. Angus does all the manly stuff - engine maintenance (aided by Eloise as mentioned above), diesel management and filling, anchoring duties (including setting either our extremely weighty "anchor chum" which he reliably tells me doubles our anchor's holding capability, or a second anchor), calling tradesmen to come and look at Snow Goose's latest technical problem, and parking us in particularly tight spots. My roles are mostly domestic, taking the lead on food supplies, cooking, laundry (ie finding a launderette!), childcare, face-painting, toy storage and location, teddy bear wellbeing, cleaning the heads, replacing the loo-paper bag when it is full, rubbish and recycling, and making sure we don't run out of water (or anything else for that matter, with the sole exception of diesel, which is outside my remit). I also do the driving for anchoring, and jump ashore with the lines when we are coming alongside. I'm afraid it really doesn't sound very glamorous when I write it all down - it's lucky there wasn't a formal job description before we started the trip or I may not have accepted... I should probably add that Angus and I share route-planning, destination decisions and sailing pretty equally, unless it is raining particularly hard, in which case I kindly volunteer to take the lead on making tea, and keeping an eye on Eloise down below.
We arrived in Dingle Harbour yesterday, which is home to the most famous dolphin in European waters. He is a bottle nosed dolphin named "Fungie", and he has lived at the entrance to the harbour since 1983, where he can be relied upon to welcome most boats they arrive. We had told Eloise all about Fungie, and she was so excited about the prospect of seeing him. What we could never have imagined was that, as we motored from Portmagee across a glassy calm Dingle Bay, in blazing sunshine and with not a breath of wind, we would see the fins of a whole pod of Fungie's friends, splashing through the sea towards us. When they arrived, they played by the bow of the boat, jumping and swimming with us, and Eloise watched, entranced, as they accompanied us on our journey for ten minutes or so, before they swam off again towards the entrance to the bay. It was so magical that it would not have mattered at all if we didn't see Fungie himself when we reached Dingle. But as we turned to enter the harbour, we saw no fewer than seven tourist boats hurtling out of it in pursuit of... yes, you guessed it, poor old Fungie. We knew he must be very near us when all of the tourist boats started driving from all directions at full pelt towards Snow Goose, and just then, sure enough, up he popped just yards from the boat, welcoming us to Dingle. He is massive business for the locals, although having watched them drive at him in their huge powerful boats, loaded with tourists screaming with excitement every time he surfaces, it is difficult to work out why he still stays here, and whether he minds at all. Still, it was great to see him, and Snow Goose will no doubt be in a few people's holiday snaps.
Dingle is supposedly a major yachting destination, although we only saw one other yacht on passage here, and I think only two yachts have arrived in the past twenty-four hours, so it is hardly busy by south coast UK standards. The major excitement for us in coming to Dingle was that there are no visitors' mooring buoys and no reasonable anchorage, only a marina. We have had a few dreadful nights at anchor recently, and to be honest were growing weary of blowing up the dinghy each time we arrived somewhere, and then load it with full waterproofs and lifejackets for everyone, plus rubbish and recycling (which are pretty tricky to get rid of in Ireland), laundry, towels and shower gel just in case we happen upon a shower, bags to bring the shopping back in, etc etc. The joy of being alongside a pontoon, to which we are firmly tied for two nights, with rubbish facilities, loos and showers at the top of the ramp, is amazing. It means that we can get on and off the boat as many times as we want, and Angus and I have both had the excitement of leaving the boat by ourselves, at our own pace, without Eloise in tow today. I also had my first shower in a month without her, which was a delight too! There won't be many marinas north of here, so it'll be back to the trusty dinghy, laden with kit, travelling ashore as a happy trio again.
I mentioned dreadful nights at anchor. Our last stop before Dingle was a beautiful place called Portmagee. It is the best place from which to take a tour boat to visit the Skelligs, a UNESCO world heritage site, which we were very keen to do. Our pilot book described (complete with a photo) four lovely yellow visitors moorings, strongly recommended as the tide runs fast and the anchor holding is moderate. Needless to say, when we entered Portmagee, we discovered that Kerry County Council, in their budget cutting wisdom, had decided no longer to put down any visitors moorings. We anchored. Our first night wasn't too bad - we only re-anchored once early on in proceedings to try and get a bit further out of the tide. The next day we went off to The Skelligs on a tour boat, which was just fabulous. Little Skellig is home to no fewer than 60,000 gannets; an incredible sight to behold. Big Skellig, or Skellig Michael, has 600 stone steps up to its 200m peak, very friendly puffins nesting all over its sides, and an amazingly preserved dry stone beehive monastery on its peak, home to monks from the 5th to the 12th century. It was an amazing sight to be able to see, and the day was only slightly marred by seeing Snow Goose nestling up against a small moored boat on our return at 4pm, which she had been nowhere near when we left her. The wind had gone around during the day, and strengthened, hence the her position had moved considerably, although the anchor had not. No damage was done, except to our confidence, and we were now anchoring on a lee shore, with the prospect of the tide turning again in a few hours, and the wind forecast to go around a further 180 degrees overnight. It was a difficult mathematical conundrum and we re-laid our anchor a further four times until we felt happy with our position, and then slept badly due to the wind, anxiety, and having our anchor drift alarm on an over-cautious setting in case we dragged towards the shore - hence it woke us when the tide turned, even though the anchor hadn't budged. We cursed Kerry County Council's shortsightedness in taking up their moorings, as we would happily have paid to use a mooring, and then would have spent our money in the Skelligs Visitor Centre, and Portmagee's pub and shop... Oh well, at least it made for a memorable stop.
We have had a good day of jobs in Dingle today - diesel, water, shopping, rubbish, showers, marine electrician etc - as well as scooting on the promenade and a visit to the aquarium. It rained for most of the day, and was misty and windy, so we were not sorry to be having a day off sailing. Our plan tomorrow is to do an overnight passage to the Aran Islands, 80 miles away. But first we will need to recheck we are happy with the weather forecast in the morning, and see whether we still have time to make the first tidal gate once Angus has retrieved his bank card from the Bank of Ireland, whose ATM machine swallowed it this evening...
Love to you all, keep in touch, and Get Well Soon Jack!
Xxx
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