Towards Carlingford

The morning broke grey and cloudy but the wind overnight had dropped, we were in Audley Roads just opposite Audley Castle. We had planned very loosely to walk around the bay and get some fresh milk but looking at the conditions and more importantly the clock on the bulkhead adjacent to the aft cabin, (we keep one on local and one on UT time) it suddenly dawned on me that this could be the best time to leave. Most forecasts were giving more wind later in the week, if we left now and took the last of the ebb we would hit a wind over tide situation at the entrance to the channel, that meant over falls, however they would only get bigger with more wind. An alternative would be to leave later but then it would mean after six hours of flood (wind with tide) the over falls would be minimal but it would be a night entry anywhere. Tricky, as the hour hand closed on 10.30 I decided to go.

We started the engine and motored out into the last of the ebb tide, very quickly we were doing 7-8 knots towards the Seagen tidal generator.

As we approached the entrance channel it was obvious that the over falls in the main channel were pretty substantial. I decided to try the smaller but less boisterous west channel, this would mean a bit of high speed rock dodging but as it turned out was pretty straightforward, however even the smaller over falls evident were decidedly uncomfortable especially for Lynne who really doesn't like being thrown around so much!

Very soon we were able to raise sail and within a short time we were a tad overpowered in the gusts so Lynne and I put a couple of rolls in the Genoa, we continued to tramp along at over 6.5 knots and unusually for us in the right direction!

We quickly brought up Ardglass and a decision to continue to Carlingford was made after listening to our first Irish area forcast on the VHF. It suggested that the weather was going to deteriorate in the next few days.

Lynne as usual did a sterling job of providing hot "brews" and after a couple of hours of trimming and tweaking the course we passed the lighthouse on St Johns point and entered Dundrum Bay. The mountains of Mourne came into full view.

I managed to get a couple of minutes of video on Lynnes iPhone, if I can figure out how to do it I will post it here.

Around the middle of the afternoon the wind strength dropped from the top of a 4 to a 3 and we shook out the couple of reefs in the Genoa.

As we approached the bay we came across two cardinals and a new wreck buoy, we made a note on the chart and sped on towards the south cardinal marking the entrance approach to Carlingford Lough. There was a large ferry approaching the channel but as usual the AIS kept us well informed as to any potential collision. We dropped the sails at the cardinal as wind was now coming directly ahead from the Lough. We followed the large ferry in as a pilot boat left to rendezvous with another large merchant vessel following us in.

The convoluted channel led us after an hour and a half to the number 18 port hand channel marker where we had to leave the channel to approach Carlingford Marina. Paddy the Marina manager was pacing the pontoons obviously having seen us approaching, this is quite easy as we had to effectively overshoot the entrance to the marina by about half a mile and the return on a bearing to avoid a large drying bank. We quickly moored up at a vacant pontoon.

It was quite late and as the last rays of the sun lit up the mountains of Mourne on the opposite side of the lough we quickly tidied up Dark Tarn and headed off into the small village of Carlingford, about a 15 min walk away. We got some Euros from the cash machine ( we were in the Repuplic of Ireland now )

And bought some seriously good fish and chips and eat them at the harbour. It seemed appropriate to then get a beer, which we did in the oldest pub in Carlingford.

A spectacularly bad "selfie"