Ireland ahoy!

What a crossing that was! I wish I could be writing that in a good way, however we had one hell of a trip, and one that we're glad is over. Everything started off well, we had a good motor sail away from Newlyn along past Lamorna and the Minack theatre. Even past Lands End, where things can get rough, was placid for us, and things were going really well. After leaving at 12:45 by 20:00 we were well up on our track. We had a light breeze from astern, full main and a preventer to stop the boom swinging around. There was still warm sunshine about and we picked up a couple of bumble bees who stopped with us on their way from the Scillies. I nicknamed them Bill and Ben and their pre sleep washing and preening was amusing to watch.

At 20:00 we had about 12 knots of true wind so it was all pretty relaxed. The forecast looked good, south veering southwest 4 or 5 occasionally 6. I wasn't too concerned about the 6, we've been out in worse. It looked as if it was going to track through well ahead of us. So as the sun's light started to go, I went down below for a few hours sleep. During Kirsty's she saw dolphins, and when I came up for my watch she had a magical smile on her face as she told me about them. On her watch the wind had gradually increased until it was blowing around 20 knots from astern, we still has full main, and had the engine running to charge the batteries. By now it was dark and had started to rain quite heavily.

As my two hour watch went on I saw the wind starting to increase until it was gusting 26 knots, it was all getting a bit rocky so when Kirsty came back on deck after having little to no sleep I suggested that we should put a reef in. The wind was now blowing a steady 27-30 knots from behind us, the rain was heavy, and the seas were fairly big as we kept surfing down them. I thought of a line from Robin Knox Johnston's book, "It's no good lying in your bunk praying to god. God won't put a reef in for you, you have to do it yourself" so in a near gale, lashing rain, and on Pixie who was having the sleighride of her life, I went up to the mast to put two reefs in. I was more aphrehensive than scared, but I was well aware that if I lost my footing or grip in that weather, Kirsty would have a hell of a job getting me back on board, even with a safety harness. Every thing went as planned the only difficult bit for me was trying to get part of the sail over a hook, that needed both hands, and all the time, Pixie was galloping along.

Even with two reefs in the mainsail Pixies was keeping up a minimum of 6 knots and surfing along down the swell at well over 8 knots, all in control, just. Because Kirsty hadn't managed to get any sleep I did her watch, but when she came back to take over up she found the sea very disorientating, so after a while in the cockpit I sent her down again. From the cockpit I could just see waves, hear them breaking, I couldn't see a horizon, just the White foam around us. Eventually it started to clam down, back to 20 knots.

I went off watch around 4:30 when it started to get light and Kirsty could see our surroundings (and the horizon), about an hour later I got a call from Kirsty. There was now thick fog and a number of fishing boats around us. We had been using our sea~me radar enhancer since dusk, and now it was foggy I was glad we had it. Kirsty had managed to thread us though the boats we had seen on our AIS (Automatic Identification System) which is displayed on our chart plotter. The AIS we got from Digital Yacht and shows shipping details, boat names and direction is a great safety addition to the boat, it takes the guesswork out of collision avoidance. So at a quick glance I could see Kirsty was taking the correct action with each of the three vessels. Unfortunately while taking avoid action Kirsty had taken the tiller pilot off the tiller and laid it in the cockpit, an errant wave caught Pixie and it rolled off the seat and stopped working. This was around 06:30 so we'd have to steer by hand for the rest of the day. The fog stayed with us for a couple of hours and eventually cleared. The day started to get brighter and things started looking up.

Anyway with the fog gone the sun came out and the wind came around onto the nose. We started off motor sailing into the confused swell whiched worked at first but as the breeze increased Pixie was getting stopped by the waves.

Then I noticed that the wind charger (Wendy) wobbling around a bit too much. All her supporting brackets were working loose in the swell of the previous night. I got the tools out and fixed it the best I could. We'd been motor sailing as high as we could and the mainsail has been slatting every now and again. I looked up at the mainsail and noticed two battens had come loose, we dropped the main and I took the battens out so they wouldn't damage themselves or more importantly the sail. With the sail back up I got back to the cockpit and sat down. Bill and Ben the bumble bees could see what was happening around them and took the opportunity to jump ship, both flying off within minutes of each other. I'd rescued a very soggy Ben from under the genoa track at first light, poor little thing was soaked, so I sat him under the spray hood to dry out. It obviously worked because as soon as he could go, he was off.

There was still a swell running and during the night we'd been running the engine to provide the power we needed to run the auto pilot, and radar. But there is something not right about the system as the highest the voltage will get is 13.2 volts but most of the time the charge is about 13.05 volts.

We continued motor sailing, then we heard something metallic fall onto the deck, I looked up and the top battern was poking out. We thought that something had fallen from the sail, but on looking around the boat I noticed 1 of 4 bolts joining the two parts of Wendy's main pole has worked its way loose and jumped off the back of the boat. Out came the tool box again but we didn't have any replacement bolts big enough. Out came the bodge tape (duct tape to give it's trade name) and I tightened the remaining bolts before a liberal application of sticky strong black tape to stop a repeat performance from the deserter's remaining 3 friends.

Wondering what else could go wrong as Pixie seemed to fall apart around us I thought we make the most of the sunshine and instead of fight against the wind, sail as high as we could north, before tacking west. All was going well until the wind died, and what little there was when it came back had backed to the west. We kept motorsailing for the next few hours, thought the sail was more for stability than propulsion. On reaching the Saltee Islands off Kilmore Quay there was bright sunshine but little wind, so we dropped the main and motored the rest of the way.

We were directed to our berth by the harbour master, who took our lines when we arrived, he gave us a very quick run through of what's around before rushing off for his dinner. He was in danger of getting in trouble because he waited to see us in.

We set about tidying up Pixie, which didn't take long, then headed off for showers. 1 euro coin gets you a 2 min shower, we had 3 euros, so I enjoyed every second of the 1:41 shower, as it took 19 seconds to heat up! There is a timer on the wall, I wasn't sitting wait with a stop watch.

On the way back to the boat we saw a chippy, and decided that fish and chips would go down a treat.



We had two portions of beer battered haddock and chips, but to be honest we could have shared one portion and still walked away happy. They were delicious. We walked off our food by taking a stroll up the hill to the pub, had a well earned pint of Guinness, before the desire for bed took over.

Location:Kilmore Quay