Around midday today with the sun beating down, and the Owenboy River like a millpond we decided to have a lazy day going down to Kinsale.

Here is photograph of us leaving Royal Cork Yacht Club and heading down the Owenboy River – it kind of reminded me a bit of Dartmouth/Fowey.

However, as has happened already this trip, as soon as we exited the estuary we had winds of up to 25-30kts. When I went to put a reef in the mainsail, the reefing line came right out in my hands! I’ve never really liked the rope the sailmakers used when they set the sails up, so it’s now consigned to the bin and a new one that can be trusted will be fitted. The rope they used is – and this is the real technical bit – made of a kind of slippy material!

Once I had the main sorted out we were out far enough to have the wind at our back again, and we had a lovely trip down the coast and into Kinsale. We were hoping to get a berth at Kinsale Yacht Club where I had been before with Marcus on Csardas, but I don’t know whats happening this week, because it was chock a block with boats rafted out three deep on the visitors berths. That being the case we went over to Castlepark Marina where there was plenty of space, albeit it is across the water from Kinsale and looks like a 1/2hr walk around by road or I will need to blow up the dingy…………..seems like a 1/2hr walk to me 🙂

We are both really pleased to have reached our jumping off point for the Scilly Isles and have been lucky in that the whilst the weather has been varied, it has allowed us to keep going and as such we have arrived here a lot sooner than expected. We will probably spend a bit of time in and around Kinsale, and wait for an appropriate weather window. Current weather forecast precludes us heading off for at least the next few days.

For those that don’t know where Kinsale is we are here…………….