Leaving Ireland

Well we finally managed to spot a decent weather window to return to Preston so we booked the Sea-lock for Wednesday about noon. within a day Soteria had decided to come with us as did Blue moon. we decided to go down to Carlingford Lough and spend the day sailing with soteria, us so we could have a shake down before the long crossing home and Soteria to put the new skipper Frank through his paces, we could also take a few photos. Blue moon was going down to Carlingford Marina to have a new engine fitted as the puny 9hp thing she had in was on its last legs. its owner asked us to shadow them down to Warrenpoint in case they needed a tow. So it was on a glorious day we all trooped down the four mile section of canal to the lock.

 

we had a short wait at the sealock for the tide to make a bit and we very gently were released into the Newry river. Blue Moon had a bit of a struggle starting there engine however it started after a while and we all left the lock chamber.

 

Lynne was once again on the helm and was looking pretty confident after a six month lay off.



 



 We slid down the beautiful lower reaches of the Newry river towards Waters Meeting with its picturesque castle.

 

 

Soteria was following in our wake so we made sure to stay in the deepest part of the channel, at one point Lynne was chuffed to find she was perfectly on the leading marks over her shoulder and shouted me to see but Soteria had slid in perfectly on line following us completely obscuring the marks with her huge rig!



 

We motored past the busy commercial docks at warrenpoint and out into the wide but shallow expanse of carlingford Lough. We had one or two fankles to sort out (its Scottish for tangle)

but eventually had sail up with one reef in the main and a couple of rolls in the genoa as it was blowing a good force 5. by the time Soteria had some sails up we had shaken out the reefs as it had dropped to a very manageable force 3.

 

Soteria gets her sails up..............

 

I took a little bit of video of the day, it shows us sailing in the lough and a lovely anchorage we found just north of the marina at Carlingford. It also has some footage of us starting the trip back to Preston the following day.