Hopping to Howth

Summary: A short trip from Dun Laoghaire to Howth. 11.7 miles in 2 hours and 45 minutes. Fairly grey and damp day, but we managed a short time actually sailing for a change.

Squeezed in at Howth YC

George arrived last night and we decided to try to move on a little. However, the forecast was for very poor visibility, so we decided just to go out into Dublin Bay and have a look and see what it was like. After a relaxing morning looking around town and looking at the various boats left over from the ISAF Youth World Championships, we left after lunch and managed a slow beat across Dublin Bay. We could just see the other side of the bay and so tacked over to the Ben of Howth and then round the corner into Howth marina.

It was a little lumpy coming into the marina against the tide, but a lovely route past the island just off Howth called Ireland’s Eye. The island has a lovely rock stack off its eastern edge, imaginatively called ‘The Stack‘. The only signs of past habitation on the island are a Martello Tower and the ruins of a church. The church was apparently the parish church for Howth for years, though it was eventually replaced by a church in Howth village when taking a boat to every service became a little restrictive.

A dose of diesel to Dublin

Leaving Milford Haven round St.Ann's Head

Summary: Milford Haven to Dun Laoghaire. 114.6 miles in 22 hours and 5 minutes. An unremarkable passage with relatively little wind. We did manage to sail for a few hours, but ended up motoring for the vast majority of the passage with too little wind to sail.

We left Milford Haven just after 7am to catch the start of the ebb down the harbour and had a good blast of tide out between Skokholm & Skomer islands and Grassholm. A few minor overfalls, but nothing much and a beautiful run between the islands. We did then manage to sail for a few hours with a light northerly, but after a few hours that died and so on went the donker. It then stayed on for the next fourteen hours or so. We headed south of the Arklow Bank and the sun setting over the hills behind Arklow was stunning. The night was then really clear with a great view of the milky way. The phosporescence was remarkable as well – very luminous in nature. A fisherman’s buoy with the tide running past it looked like it had a glowing green ring around its base. Phosphorescence is energy being released slowly in the form of light. The phosphoresence in water is mainly due to dinoflagellates which are a form of marine plankton and they emit the light when disturbed in the wake of the boat. Estimates suggest that there are around 1700 different species of marine dinoflagellates, so goodness knows which we saw in the water!