Weather Bombs

Interesting weather conditions just up on the north coast, We have been watching pictures on TV from there and the west coast of Scotland, mainly places we have visited recently like Largs and also the coast of Antrim Portrush etc.

The winds have been over 100 mph at times and waves of 50ft have ben recorded. We however have got away very lightly. Today the winds were only gusting to 28-30 mph but were strangely gusting around the compass swinging through 360 degrees. The majority of the time wind speeds were in the force 2-3 bracket.

The conditions up North have been caused by a slow moving and very deep low that has been deepened even further by a dip in the jet stream (bit like a child's toy, the whip and spinning top for those old enough to remember one) The now fashionable term for a depression that is deepened by some other phenomena is a `Weather Bomb` in the case of the famous Fastnet storm it was a secondary low. In this case it is dry air from the stratosphere deepening the low pressure by a process known as explosive cyclogenesis. All pretty scary stuff.

And another storm due tomorrow, fingers crossed.

Waves and waving at Port Stewart north coast of Antrim

Waves at Whitehaven Cumbria. I once asked Gregg Norris a Whitbread round the world sailor, where did you see the roughest seas Greg, Cape Horn, The Southern Ocean, cape of Good Hope?

he thought for a while then said “St Bees Cumbria”……… “Bloody awful place”

current affairs

for the last week or two there has been a furious exchange of e-mails between the Newry and Mourne district council and several boat owners berthed at the Albert Basin in Newry. Obviously this includes yours truly. The basic problem being that very few people on the council appear to know anything about boats. There is a generally held opinion that it isn't only boats that the council know very little about!

The power supply for yachts at the quays run from some rather elaborate cast iron boxes, quite Victorian and very functional in a rather old fashioned way however in another wholly inadequate as they only hold two connection points each. In consequence many connections up to now have been supplied by splitting the supply cables so at least two boats could share a supply. As there are only 5 boxes that means 10 power points. There are presently 23 yachts berthed at the Quays!

Enter the electrician, unfortunately the large training boat Soteria has been tripping the circuit breakers having a total of five leads coming out of one box. The electrician they sent down pointed out that this was 1/ probably unsafe 2/ exceeding the supply amp age 3/ illegal as it contravened regulations for supply to boats. The crew of Soteria reacted poorly and the electrician reported back to the council who correctly then informed us all that what we were doing was, …well see above.

The threat was that we would all be disconnected however in a flurry of cooperation and chaotic rushing around we managed to get the supplys back down to ten boats being supplied from ten power points, the council representatives agreed to consider adding additional powerpoints and we as berth holders agreed to disconnect one boat before connecting another so that only ten boats were connected at any one time.

Lynne and I were also photographed for the local paper the Newry Reporter.

First time as a page three girl for Lynne!

So all's well with the world again……….and we have got to know a lot more of our neighbours here at the Quays.

Pirates vs the moral dilemma......an open letter to Garmin.

I just bought a new electronic chart, Atlantic islands and the Iberian peninsular (Spain) the particular format we use is Garmin Bluechart, in this case it's the all singing and dancing "vision" version.

However, Garmin say that it's not possible to create a backup of this SD card.

That's not true.....

It's not easy, but it is possible.........

I would also venture to suggest that this isn't piracy it's prudent.

So I now have a copy in each of our two plotters and the original as a backup.

Moral dilemma?

Nope....

I know (roughly) the MTBF (mean time before failure) of solid state memory. So I would like a backup of this fairly vital software in case the media fails......

I have absolutely no intention of flogging copies of this sd card on fleabay. That would be immoral.

If I can crack the hidden file security of your software in the ten minutes available before the pub then it does beg the question why bother? The only people your so called security is impacting are infact your customers who you are endangering by your short sighted view.

The real pirates would take less time than me to crack your security, remove it and allow users to create backups of this software. What do you have to lose? If we can all back up in case of a media fail, we all would be a damn sight safer and not so dependent on a one shot deal. I am fairly sure that most of us would have bought an original copy in the first place, after all, this isn't One Directions new album is it?

Or do nothing, and I will just tell everyone who asks how to circumvent your security.

Drifting

Ah Winter..........the time of dreams and plans. I sit in our cozy cabin and reach for a pilot, mentally sailing across the sea and thinking about where to go in the spring. Where will Dark Tarn take us?

I don't have to drift very far before I am sidetracked by an old story.

Sailing South down the East Coast of Ireland you pass Arklow and Rosslare at this point I have promised Lynne we will cross back to Wales to visit Pembrokeshire.

So there we are, crossing St George's channel in my minds eye and suddenly I realise we have just crossed the Sumner line. Of course you can't actually see it, in fact it didn't exist until December 17 1837. Captain Sumner was on a voyage from South Carolina to Scotland. Not having a had a sun sight for a few days Captain Sumner was unsure of his position, however he knew he was in the vicinity of the cluster of islands and rocks off the south west corner of Wales known to the ancient Greeks as the headland of the seven perils. Suddenly the clouds parted and Captain Sumner was able to get one sight. He duly plotted this and he got a latitude fix. However he would need several more sights to establish his longitude. Pondering this he plotted the same fix by reducing the sight by 10 and 20 degrees from his estimated position. Lo and behold the sights formed a straight line. The Sumner line. The line intercepted the position of the Smalls light. Captain Sumner turned to follow the line and the light duly appeared on the bow a few hours later.

This is the basis of modern celestial navigation later refined by Marq St Hilaire, The line isn't actually a line, it's a part of a circle where the altitude of the celestial body is the same from everywhere on the circle. Imagine a room with a single lightbulb and visualise the cone of light it throws on the floor and if you walked around the light measuring the angle between the cone and the bulb the angle would remain the same, you get the basic idea.

There you go, simple idea, but crucially no one had thought of it before.

Unfortunately this story doesn't have a happy ending because our hero ended his days in an asylum.

However I for one salute you. It's a brilliant piece of abstract thinking, this particular area of sea I pride myself on knowing very well. A wonderful cauldron of tides, history, landscape, wildlife and welshness. I need to return and  as I do, I promise I will remember captain Sumner as we cross his invisible line.

Of course I will also remember a day when "Two Timer" was knocked down and rolled off the South Bishop light. But that's my history and another story..........

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance..........possibly

,Bought two albums this week, although "album" is possibly an anachronism. Let's just call them "downloads" , after all with a finite amount of room aboard. It's just music to my iPad.

I was and I am not ashamed to admit it looking forward with huge anticipation to Pink Floyds new Album ,record, release or whatever, The endless river. Of course being a diehard fan I opted for the deluxe all singing and dancing version which I actually downloaded courtesy of our hosts at the B&B in Horwich. It was however several days later that I actually listened to it.

However in the meantime I had also downloaded an album record or whatever by an obscure Scottish musician called Mike Vass, the music in question is called " In the wake of Niel Gunn"

Mike unfortunately became quite ill after being bitten, and contracted lymes disease. After his recovery he undertook a voyage following the voyage of Neil Gunn in 1937. This trip of Neil's with his wife is the subject of his book ' Off in a boat' which is a very honest and often amusing account both of a not very experienced sailor and the west coast characters of half a century ago, a sort of Para Handi meets Whisky Galore. It kickstarted Neil's literary career and he went on to become a successful novelist.

Although not well known outside his native land Neil Gunn is widely appreciated in Scotland.

Mike Vass apparently composed most of this music on the recreation of Neil's voyage and is a mix of modern and traditional musical styles, if you ever sail the west coast this is the soundtrack. Trust me.

£22,000 of Arts council grant well spent! There are numerous sites a Google search will throw up but it is especially worth finding the you- tube videos of the trip.

Ring of Gullion Way

We have been itching to get out walking in the local area but with a particularly long period of 'soft' weather among other things it has not proven possible. However the day before we fly home for Alex's birthday, the sun was shining and the air was still.... A walk that starts effectively from our mooring in Newry is the Ring of Gullion Way, the whole walk is 61 Kms in length but we had decided to walk the initial section to Flagstaff which is a hill and viewpoint above Fathom Forest which itself adjacent to Narrow water near Warrenpoint.

Most roads out of Newry involve a climb out of the valley and this was no exception, a good couple of kilometres steady climbing on the main road to Dublin saw us just before the motorway roundabout. The path however sneaks off down a small road which becomes a track and then a path.

The country is a heathland in character and doesn't really encourage rough wandering as it would be a painful struggle through the gorse. We were also unsure as to the legality ( in England we are now blessed with the "right to roam" ) so we stuck very closely to the marked pathways.

After walking around the lower slopes of Fathom Mountain, suddenly the view opened up, looking down on the Clanrye river we had come up in Dark Tarn a month ago. Lynne was looking towards Hilltown and the land of her ancestors.

The channel was fairly obvious from this height, as were the shallow bits!

To the right was a magnificent view down to Narrow Water and Carlingford Lough beyond.

We dropped Into Fathom Forest below and joined a small road climbing through the conifers towards th next hill along, Flagstaff and its viewpoint.

This was very nicely laid out with picnic benches and plaques with information on local history.

The Gullion ring is in fact the remains of an ancient volcano, the ring is actually the ring dyke formed by the rim of the Caldera and is actually a very famous geological structure. The footpath largely follows the rim hence the name. Ring of Gullion.

On our way back we decided to carry on for a short distance to the village of Clontygora in order to have a look at the chambered graves. These are dated to between 2500 BC and 3500 BC. Known locally as the  "Kings Ring" 

Chambered graves normally face East but this one faces North and would have been a very impressive structure in its day, consisting of a three tiered chambered structure. Used as a communal burial site.

At this point we were nearly back in "the south" being about 200 metres from the border.

Clontygora translates as " valley of the goats" however there were non to be seen, but almost every farm and small holding had a dog, some of which sounded a bit vicious! Most were actually very docile, this one was very friendly. He had obviously been in the wars having only three legs and being blind in one eye. We christened him " mad eye " after  mad eye Moody from Harry Potter.

 

I have always had a soft spot for Collies.......

A fantastic day out in the hills and some stunning views, we are obviously out of practise on the hillwalking front as we were both suffering from very tired legs when we got back to Newry!

On the shoulders of giants......

Everything happens for a reason, it usually starts as a really small thing, this peculiar sequence of events is sometimes described as the "butterfly effect". In my case, a few years ago, it was following an Irish boat called Mithril, and her owners Pete Maxwell and his partner Geraldine Foley. I have to admit at this point it was a virtual interest, following their adventures on the Internet. You can do much the same, as in the way of these things, their footprints still exist in cyberspace, look at http://sailmithril.tripod.com/thevoyages

 I hope I may be permitted to share a few of those memories and images for the sake of historical interest. As far as I am aware Mythril was the first boat (yacht) to winter over at Newry.

This was I the heady days of 2005, ( giving my age away yet again! ) The fishermen are actually fishing in Soterias berth. I believe that in those heady days of yore Mithril was the only boat here. Sainsburys however, had seen the future, Pete and Grealdine took full advantage of the close proximity and used the local supermarket to provision for a long voyage, a circumnavigation in fact. I remembered Pete (or was it Geraldine? ) commented on the good shelter and cheap mooring as well as access to useful stuff, later I would tell this story to my wife while editing out the drunks midnight visits that were also a feature!

This is a photo of Mithril at Strangford Lough, as you can see she is a righteous, black, steel hulled ocean wanderer. Kind of why I was interested in her story.

So as we approached the North East Coast of Ireland I remembered Mithrils story and a few inquiries told me that not a lot had changed. Which is why we are here, or more correctly ,its how we began to think about wintering here.

As it turns out, Pete and Geraldine sold Mithril after their last voyage, I believe their plans involved the European canal system, however...........

Before that Mithril had voyaged to the ends of the earth, this is a photo of Mithril at Kerguelen in the Antarctic.

Of course it has to get a lot warmer before it goes cold again and I love this picture of our heros looking out a the waves breaking over a coral reef somewhere in the tropics,  Well  that's the dream isn't it? To be honest so are the high latitudes........... At least for me anyway.

I raise a glass to you both, and the strange thing is that I have recently discovered that our heros are still around in Newry.

At least I think they are, It would appear that Pete is a leading light on the ongoing struggle to open up the Newry canal. He is I fact the president of the local branch of the IWAI . My plan now is to swap some physical labour for a chance to speak to one of my heros.

Yet more detective work needs to be done.

Pilotage notes for Kerguerlen Pete?

 

History Detectives

Another reason for staying at Newry is of course the hunt for family history, Lynnes family history to be precise. Not too far away is the village of Hilltown which nestles in the shadow of the Mountains of Mourne. It is the nearest village to the townland of Clonduff, or is it parish of Clonduff? I must admit I am not yet completely comfortable with the different land divisions and I sometimes find its all very confusing. However as the day was so nice and Walter offered to run us out, we jumped at  the opportunity of a visit starting with the local Catholic church.

 

Luckily Walter is very nearly a local despite originally coming from Fleetwood, and knew the church so we went straight there, the view above is of Hilltown from the church steps.

  

The church is The Church of St John the Evangelist, in the parish of Clonduff in the townland of Ballymaghery. Founded in 1850.

 

It is rather lovely inside and has many beautiful stained glass windows.

 

 

We tried to speak to the priest but he was obviously not at home so we scoured the graveyard for evidence of the McConville family. There they were, but all fairly recent graves, however at least it proved that we were probably in the right place. There were probably only a couple of dozen surnames in the whole graveyard.

 

 

as we walked back with Walter we noticed that the priest had returned so we went over to introduce ourselves and Lynne soon got to grips with the arcane script of the parish records, unfortunately with little success.

 

However Father was quite happy for us to return if we could get any more information, it is not inconceivable that there is an error in our information and more detective work is needed. For example we are unsure whether one date we have is for a baptism or a birth?

 

Grand day out for all that! Once again thank you to Walter for his generous help.

 

What If?

In light of developing plans for next year I thought it was time to revise Dark Tarns safety equipment list. Up to now we have been largely coastal cruising and have put off the purchase of a life raft until we decided to go deep sea. the same applies to that most useful item of safety equipment the EPIRB
(Emergency position indicating radio beacon). as these items are a/quite expensive and b/ have a limited life between services, normally three years or so it seemed sensible to wait until just before we depart on a long trip before purchasing.
After a bit of scouring on the internet and a few e-mails to local suppliers we were offered a chance to go to a local life raft service centre for a chat and the chance to actually see a few rafts unpacked, not something we ever hope to do in real life!
Luckily the day broke fine and after a quick phone call to establish a convenient time even more luckily we had a visit from Walter Scott of the Red Star Boat Club who kindly offered to run us to the location. The alternative would have been to walk quite a long way or take the dingy about 300 metres down the canal. Told you it was local...........

 

Paul and Joe turned out to be a mine of information, and soon began to show us the ins and outs of life rafts, of course this meant Lynne getting in and out of a few...

 

 The workspace was spotless, always a good sign.

We were particularly taken by the difference between the commercial rafts,( RFD) and the usual Yottie rafts.

This particular one had been bought for £250 off Fleabay, and the owner was moaning because the service was going to cost another £300, moral don't buy rafts off E-Bay as you can probably buy a new one for not a lot more once its been properly serviced, of course that assumes there is NOTHING wrong with it, and we all know what assumptions are mothers of don't we? In actual fact this was a good one, however close examination revealed that the materials used in its construction were not in the same league as the commercial rafts and the canopy was unlined for example so it would have been a lot colder to sit in for any length of time. Its resistance to abrasion and punctures was also a bit of a lottery, Joe told us it would likely split were as the RFD would just hole and be readily repairable. Small things but worth a bit of thought now so we don't worry later.
We discussed the various equipment levels for ISAF ISO and SOLAS certification and Joe kindly showed us some of the stuff packed in a SOLAS A liferaft.

this includes pouches or sachets of fresh water, the large orange bag above is packed with about 5 litres per person, emergency food, the last time I tasted this on a course it was truly awful, this time however it was fairly palatable (tasted a bit like muesli bar) there are also repair kits, a CAT C first aid kit, pump paddles flares etc.

It certainly gave us a lot to think about, and thanks to Keith from KTS safety at Kilkeel, Paul and Joe at Newry, for giving us their time and the benefit of their experience. Also a big cheers to Walter for the lift, and the bottle of wine, a very nice man (from Fleetwood, so a fellow countryman)

 

 

Onion skins

It's funny, if you stay in a place for a week or two, then the onion skin effect begins........

So just when you thought you knew your way around, a humongous Tesco turns up, just 200 metres from the city centre.

 You find a pub that has an open mike night and suddenly you realise where all the young people are hanging.........

You go to a chamber orchestra concert, little realising that Newry had been invaded by Bulgaria, world music , gypsy dances, Ulean pipes, Indian folk music, opera, a beautiful and fascinating mix of harmonies and rhythm.

So to the pub and guess what? It continues, we are really enjoying our stay in Newry, we are getting to know our neighbours and the ladies at the information office at Bagenals Castle are very helpfu. Bagenals Castle is also the local museum and a very fine one. It perfectly demonstrates the onion skin principle in that it is one of the oldest buildings in Newry but has been added to and built around so that it is necessaryto peel way some of its skin to see the history underneath. The museum facilitates this in a number of ways one of which is the glass floor showing the cellars ( or dungeons maybe?)

 Also in a vey hands on sort of a way it allows and encourages you to interact with the exhibits, this also gives Lynne an excuse for " dressing up "

The canal basin where we are moored also has a lot of history attached, this would have been the view from around  the 1800s

Dark Tarn is moored just behind where the steam vessel on the right is in the photograph, the view in the background is largely unchanged except for a few mobile phone masts and the floodlights for the local Gaelic football ground.

A similar view from 1963 or thereabouts, the foremost vessel is from Denmark and is unloading timber

This is an intriguing image I unearthed, it is definitely the Ship Canal and is noted as being the Quays however I suspect it is more towards the town centre, what is now known as the Butter Crane Quay and Sugar Island.

Judging by the cars this must date from the 1930s or 1940s

More detective work needed............

Settling......

The weather took a turn for the better and this allowed us to explore a little further afield. We took a bus to Warrenpoint to have a look around. We had passed the small town and harbour in the rain a week ago. One of the boats on the council pontoons was Zig Zag which is owned by a leading light in the local unconventional yacht club. The red star boat club, it has no constitution and no annual fees needless to say we have applied for membership!

Looking down Carlingford Lough from Warrenpoint, the Haulbowline lighthouse is just visible on the horizon.

We also had a wee walk up the continuation of the canal, the towpath goes all the way to Portadown and allegedly is second only to the Giants Causeway in terms of visitor numbers, of course we are in Ireland! We walked a couple of miles and came across the local restoration society hard at work restoring the surroundings to the second lock.

The canal is quite scenic and unlike towpaths in England this appears to be a small road and is metalled hence there are a large number of bikes use it ( maybe the visitor numbers are correct )

It would be lovely to see the canal restored along its full length, as you can see past the second lock it becomes very congested and weedy. However the canal exists along its entire length thanks to volunteers campaigning to preserve it so hopes are high.

When we returned to Dark Tarn we discovered another visitor tied up alongside Soteria and Badger.

It was the ex herring drifter 'Silvery Light' built in 1885 in St Ives, in Cornwall.

Our cozy home is fast becoming a Maritime Museum! Fascinating......

We are slowly taking advantage of the nice weather to snug Dark Tarn down for the winter, we have bought a de-humidifier to combat the inevitable damp and condensation and we rinsed the salt out of the Genoa and let it dry in the sun, hopefully we should be able to make enough room on the boat to store the sails over winter.

Of course , it being Sunday we didn't want to work too hard! So I for one thought I'd sit in the sun in the cockpit and catch up on my blog. Lynne was reading a yachting magazine, hopefully she will get some good ideas for where to head for next year!

Settling in at Newry

After the first storm, apart from a floating platform left over from a triathlon recently floating off down the dock, everything survived without damage. Allandale, our trusty tender was however full of rainwater so Lynne very kindly volunteered to bail her out as my arm is still suffering a little tennis elbow (my excuse!)

We decided that we would devote the next week to exploring our new home, first jobs were to register with a doctor and join the library. The doctors turned out to all live in a small encampment with the rather grand title of ' Health Village' it actually looked a little like an Eastern European prison camp! However the staff were very helpful as usual and I was registered without fuss.

 The library deserves a mention as it really is splendid. I joined initially for the usual reasons, namely Internet access and the ability to print from a PC. However Lynne spent hours on the top floor ( the library is a three story building) this has a huge reference section on local history including OS maps from the 19th century, I am sure we will be spending some time there, apparently there is also a member of staff with particular expertise on matters of family history.

We also took the oppertunity to introduce ourselves to the neighbours, on the end is the Christian sail traing schooner 'Soteria' and her skipper Chris, owner Vicky, first and second mates Paula and Derek.

We are trying to figure a subtle way of discovering whether they have a washing machine on board, or even a Victorian mangle, they certainly wash a lot! The boat next to her is Badger, but not the one we know. She appears to be a little steam tug.

The next boat along is a narrow boat 'Goldfinch' owned I believe by a Londoner, she was shipped over to Warrenpoint and brought up the river and canal, so she has travelled 5 miles in Ireland! Apparently she is actually a cafe, and we are promised a hog roast when she opens, can't wait!

We are also on chatting terms with several of the sailing boats moored along the quay but not unfortunately our immediate neighbour, a yellow Van de Stadt, Cuileann.

I am sure we wil meet the owner soon, the old gent who owns the 'She 27' She Dhu was a mine of information about local facilities. This Sparkman and Stevens boat is also very easy on the eye.

The Quay has quite a history being on the first summit level canal ever dug in the UK, it is a ship canal and used to go all the way through to Lough Neagh, actually it still does but isn't navigable due to the locks being in disrepair. There is a canal side walk that goes to Portadown which is about 20 miles away, Lynne and I are planning to walk it and catch the bus back. The canal goes right through Newry City centre and the redeveloped sections are quite attractive with a lot of public art some of which reflects the commercial history of the area. This particular one stands a little further down the quay and is entitled " The Docker".

So here we are, we have discovered that the transport links are excellent, the shops are great, we literally want for nothing, within a stones throw of the boat is a shopping centre with a large Sainsburys, fast food outlets ( yummy) and even a cinema, unfortunately it is one of the few which doesn't do 'Orange Wednesday', can't have everything! 

I also bought one of these little things, The EE sim in my iPad has a 4G signal on the boat, unfortunately it costs me £20 for a measly 4GB of data, but now for the same money I have 15 GB and this little marvel makes the whole boat a wi-fi hotspot, so I can now have my laptop, iPad phone all sharing the same Internet connection, it also fits in my pocket so I can carry my internet bubble around with me! Brilliant!

We still have lots to explore, we have bought a few maps to get oriented and are looking forward to the winter. We hope that the shelter afforded by the surrounding mountains will give us a mild season. Tonight there was a lovely pink glow over the city as the sun went down.

Time to get the charts and pilots out and do some planning for next years adventures, in the meantime we have a beautiful corner of county Down to explore and Lynne is looking forward to the hunt for her ancestors.