Back on Board and sailing

The taxi from Kerry Airport took us along the coast on the way to Dingle. Watching the breakers rolling in to the surfer's beach at Inch made me doubt that we would be going anywhere before midweek, but the forecast was for lighter winds tomorrow, so we could only hope the swell would go down.

After arriving on Robinetta on Sunday evening Julian and I spent Monday morning turning her back into a sailing boat. According to Peter the marina manager the weather had been horrible the entire time we were away, but the only signs of this were that my clothes locker was wet inside. This always happens when it rains! Worm had made a very good cover for the forehatch, and the whole forepeak was drier as a consequence.

The antifoul on Worm's underside had got quite scraped. The weather was dry so I put a fresh coat on. We had to let this dry a bit before relaunching her, but there were other things than needed doing meanwhile, like scrubbing off the weed that had grown on her sides since we left her, and filling the water tanks.

We had topped up Robinetta's main diesel tanks before leaving her last month, so now had an empty 10litre fuel can. We walked along to the local petrol station and re-filled it, then on the way back stopped for lunch at the Fishbarr on the Marina quay. Once we were back on Robinetta I got the chartplotter out, and connected it to its power lead in the cockpit, and we were ready to go. Except we weren't. The chartplotter would not turn on.

After half an hour of checking and trying Julian gave up trying to make it work. There is power getting to the plotter,  but nothing works.
We set off anyway. We have passage charts, and our back-up electronic ones on Julian's Samsung tablet. The major problem is that we now have no depth gauge...

We motored slowly across Dingle Bay, and I helmed us to keep in the wel marked channel, while Julian got the bowsprit out. Fungie the Dingle Dolphin was in the bay, and watching 3 fully laden trip boats chasing the dolphin was entertaining, but distracting. The trip boats charged past us and out past Reenberg Point, which let me concentrate better on Robinetta's own passage out of the bay.

The swell outside felt challenging at first, but we soon got used to it and hoisted the reefed main for what turned out to be a pleasant sail towards Valentia Island. Three common dolphins appeared alongside and paced for for a minute before heading off again, so much more civilised than the chase after Fungie!

Entrance to Valentia Sound

Our destination for the evening was Port Magee at the south end of Valentia Island. There is a bridge across Valentia Sound just north of it, so we had to go along the Atlantic side of Valentia to reach it. Once past the Northern entrance to Valentia Sound the sea state worsned, with more cross waves on the swell which varied in height quite randomly. Julian was helming by this point and finding it hard work. There was spray breaking on off lying rocks,and it was our first sail for a while without the reassuring “you are here” of the chartplotter.

I turned on the tablet, and checked our position and heading using the navionics chart. We were half way along Valentia Island, and just where we should be relative to the coast, and on a good heading to clear the rocks at Bray Head where we would turn. I switched the tablet off again to save its battery. When we first bought Robinetta we used to sail her the old fashioned way. It is easy to become too reliant on GPS.

Soon after this we put the engine on to help Julian hold the heading. Robinetta was being knocked off course on an irregular basis, and everytime this happened the sails were set incorrectly for her new course and she would slow down. Having the engine on, on quite low revs, helped Julian regain course much more quickly.

Bray Head

Once clear of Bray Head we gybed Robinetta round and headed north into the Portmagee channel. The swell seemed to follow us round Bray Head, but every curve of the channel decreased the wave height. We got a lot of wind shadow from Valentia Island and I dropped the main while Julian held the course. We had a good chartlet to follow, but I asked Julian to put the tablet on to check our pilotage and we reached Portmagee Harbour without problems.

There are pontoons there, opened in 2014, with 1 visitor berth reserved on the hammer head. This was already taken, by Déanha of Dingle, a large(ish) motor cruiser we had seen in Dingle Marina only that morning. We approached carefully and saw the skipper had put out plenty of fenders and opened a gap in his safety rails, obviously inviting people to raft up. Julian pulled Robinetta's bowsprit in and we approached slowly for a perfect gentle stop.

Portmagee

Neither of us felt particularly hungry, so after a snack we walked ashore to the pub for a drink and to pay for the mooring. Portmagee has brightly painted houses, a little like Tobermory, but is much smaller. There are a lot of visitor information plaques, and we enjoyed a little walk around before heading back to Robinetta to sleep.