It's eleven o'clock and Liz has just woken me. "It's a lovely night and I'm off to sleep". We run a four hours on, four hours off watch system, when the weather is fair, and we are on our own. And on our own is what we have been, for the last three weeks.
Three weeks of the most idyllic cruising imaginable, on the West coast of Ireland. Ahead of us lie the Scillies, Lands End and our first stopover port of Helford. Behind us lies a taste of the life style we hope to make our own. Above us shines the moon, fine to port and still climbing. Wind about
Force 3 over the quarter and nothing to do for the next four hours but relive the highlights of our cruise.
We had a friend take the boat, a Warrior 35 called 'Tidos', after the Greek goddess of shipbuilding, over to Ireland so
that we could start our holiday there, rather than struggling to get all the way there and back in just three weeks.
We drove there, taking nothing but the essentials (three cases of wine from our last trip to France), swapped car for boat and began our Irish cruise in Crookhaven.
It cost £5 per night to lie to a visitors buoy, payable at the bar and, therefore
- inevitably - it had cost at least twice this amount before we got out of
the bar!
A night on board, to get settled in to the boat again, and then we sailed for Dingle, about 90 miles to the
North. Ninety miles of gentle Atlantic swell, of low white cloud on impossibly green hills, of mists and anticipation.
The pilot book was a little vague about passing inshore of Puffin Island so we stood off, despite
pleas from Liz to see one of these aquatic comics.
By the time we reached Dursey Island, the pilot and I were both feeling a little more confident so we took the inshore passage there, through mist and light rain and found a good stiff breeze at the North end of the sound. We came into Dingle in company with the setting sun and
'Funghi', the resident dolphin and master of the art of startling crews on small boats by jumping out of the water just inches from the cockpit and exhaling hard.
Dingle used to be a fishing port but now lives off the back of its dolphin. There are Funghi T-shirts, Funghi dresses, Funghi everything, including a stunning bronze in the square, deliberately placed low on the ground so
that the nippers and skippers of tomorrow can play out their fantasies on nearly the real thing. Dingle is a very small town but has 52 pubs, as many restaurants and a marina that charges £11 per night including electricity for a 35
foot boat.
We could have stayed for weeks but timetables take no account of desire and Valentia Island was calling. A gentle place, even by the gentle standards of Ireland, Valentia softly
boasts its modest claims to fame: it is the most Westerly point of Europe;
houses the terminal of the first trans-oceanic telecommunications cable;
sports the footprints of a rare pre-historic beast.
Valentia politely declined to boast about its fuchsia hedges, the warmth of its residents, its free moorings and the sense of utter relaxation that seeps through every pore of every visitor . I have a deep rooted belief that people do not age on the island of Valentia; it would simply be far too much effort.
Valentia to Ardgroom. How do you choose which harbours to visit in another country? You look at the pilot book. Read magazine articles. Drag up faint memories of near forgotten club house chat. And study the chart. Again and again we look at the coastline, the topography, the roads hills and rivers and choose a destination by some process akin to divination.
"I think we'll stay a night or two there" you say, as you stab the chart sometime in February or March and, months later, you drop the hook in your little private patch of heaven. At least, that's what we did with Ardgroom.
Take a natural harbour with a coastline of about 5 miles. Surround it with steep green hills. Throw in a handful of bright yellow lichen-encrusted rocks, enough to keep the navigator on his toes, and then add one boat, your own. There we stayed for two days and nights, walking a couple of miles to the village for Guinness and stores and did nothing else but relax.
The moon is still climbing, the wind still steady, as steady as Liz's sleeping. The boat has settled into her easy, unhurried, motion and the log unwinds the miles. There are no other boats, no lights from shore, no distractions. Just the sea and the wind and the stars and the near-full
moon...
Next stop was Sneem. Again, we lay to our anchor but, this time, in company with three other visitors, a veritable flotilla in Ireland.
A two mile trip in the tender, with the flood tide, up to the village, there to refresh ourselves with oysters and Guinness, And traditional music and Guinness. And Guinness and Guinness. Back with the ebb, in company with half a dozen seals, the first of our holiday. Beautiful scenery. Challenging pilotage. Completely unspoilt cruising.
On to Laurence Cove, a tiny marina on the north side of Bear Island, run by John and his wife. As neat and tidy and pretty a spot as you'll ever find.
I overheard a grizzled, wind-burned old salt in the men's shower block:
"This must be the only Gents in Christendom with lace curtains and bunch of fresh flowers." I am sure he was right.
To dine ashore at Laurence Cove you must choose between the two
restaurants. One is execrable, one exquisite, and I leave it to you, gentle reader, to venture there and discover which is which.
There is a little ferry that takes up to four cars (drive on, back off) and a handful of passengers
, to and from the mainland, which we took. Then we walked about four miles to Castletown, stopping at McGinty's Bar on the way in to the centre.
If you go to Ireland and have time to visit only one bar, make it McGintys. In fact, go to Ireland purely for the sake of having a pint in McGintys. It manages to distil everything that's Irish and friendly and comfortable into its half bar, half shop, premises. A difficult place to leave, but we found the fishing fleet had just docked and watching the tuna being unloaded prompted me to ask a fearsome looking woman, blood drenched and armed with a machete for "a couple of tuna steaks".
I caught sight of the first slab of fish flesh she hacked off and quickly reduced my order to just one. It weighed nearly three pounds. We have no fridge on
'Tidos'. Three pounds of tuna is a lot for two people but we managed, over the next two nights,
barbequed on the pushpit, with butternut squash and fresh chillies.
We had only one disappointment in Ireland, our next port, Glengariff.
The pilot book described it as "the Madeira of Western Ireland" and not to be missed at any cost. The harbour is lovely with a host of little islands and inlets but there, in the middle,
was the kiss of death for any small port: a cruise ship, disgorging passengers onto loud, fast, tenders to ferry them ashore to the
town - a sad sort of place, with a badly distorted local economy selling naught but sheep skins and Irish tartans. We did the best thing to do with such a place and took the bus out to the town of Bantry, some twenty miles away. We had forgotten what a simple pleasure travelling by bus can be and vowed to repeat the exercise regularly.
Then we set sail for our last stop, Baltimore. Yet another jewel of a town, with a harbour that you could spend days exploring. We dropped the hook, in the company of ten or
twelve other visitors, and went ashore to the Harbour Master's office.
There I found a pretty girl in her early twenties, blonde hair she could sit on, short shorts and a tan to suit and made the mistake of asking where I could find the harbour master. "Yes?" she
said, fixing me with a hard look. Whoops! My first Harbour Mistress. That somehow sounds a lot more exciting than a
harbour master.
How I wish I could write her accent. "I expect you've come to pay your harbour dues", she said. "That'll be six pounds". Having paid, at most, £5 to lie to a mooring I must have looked a bit surprised to be charged six to lie to
my own anchor. "Oh", she said, "Don't worry. That's for the year. You can stay right there for as long as you want and come back as often as you like for 12
months." The harbour is beautiful. The town is beautiful. Even the harbour master is beautiful. Only in Ireland.
The moon is at its zenith now. In front of me is a silver road, soldered onto the sea by the moon, stretching to the horizon. With my woman sleeping, my boat running before a friendly breeze and my memories of a taste of life to come, we are quietly sailing down the path of the moon.
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