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!