Glandore 2015

We headed down as planned on Sunday for the parade of sail. Sunday was a beautiful day for it and we had a great day out followed by enough Guinness to skip rowing back to the boat and opting to sleep it off in Kens campervan.
We went to the briefing on Monday morning but with a forecast of 32kts SW the sail in company to Baltimore was called off so we decided after a very leisurely full Irish breakfast to try and get to Castletownshend and go exploring the shallows in the skiff.
We set out with a well reefed main and jib and got a few miles South before tacking West. When we tacked West we had a fairly big sea right on the beam and were making a fair amount of leeway and rather than spend hours tacking back and forth we decided to turn and run while we had the room. We had a hell of a run back in the harbour though and soon enough we were back in the pub.
We did at least manage to stay on board the second night.
Daily races are still going on for the week and it is great to see all the beautiful gaff rigs around the bay but Tuesday was the last day I could spare.
I only started to take any pictures as soon as I was back fishing.

Irish Summer

Its starting to seem apparent that this Summer may be a lost cause. I read somewhere a month ago that El Nino years tend to give us very blustery unsettled conditions, I generally take all forecasts beyond 2 to 3 days with a pinch of salt but so far it seems to have been very accurate.
The average wind speed seems to be a bout a force 5 with regular days gusting to force 7, I brought the washing in off the line yesterday as it was the driest it had been since I hung it out 5 or 6 days ago. Just as well as there was torrential rain this morning when I woke up.
We get the odd day that calms down a bit but its nigh on impossible to plan anything, Glandore classic regatta is this weekend and there is a sail in company on Monday and Tuesday which we hoped to join in on before perhaps venturing off  on our own for a day or so but as it stands it will hardly be worth even staying on board. Guess we will take what we get and do what we can. Here's hoping for a pleasant late season.

Glandore Classic 2015

So after all that I took the battery back down and still not a gug. I then realised that the wire to the kill switch had pulled off of the battery terminal so there never was a dead battery.

I'm annoyed that I am doing so little sailing so far this year but to be quite honest this Summer has been absolute shite, It is pouring rain right now and there is a warning of fairly severe thunder storms tonight following what has been the best part of a South-easterly gale today. The next week doesn't look like much of a gem either so really I am just going to hold my breath and not worry about it too much until after the Glandore Classic in two weeks time. Following that Teal need not be in Glandore so if the weather co-operates we might hopefully get somewhere.
To ad to that Ken will hopefully have a bit more free time and I'm hoping to have my house plastered so I can leave it to dry out for a month or so.

Here's one of Teal on a much more pleasant day. Photo courtesy of Tim Cooke http://ilur.tumblr.com/