We had left the anchorage in Dunmore East and we were at last sailing, We were just near where the gas regulator had failed and we were putting on a cup of tea, so we felt that we were at the moment of truth. Would the gas regulator work or would it fail again, we called it our moment of truth. Of cause it worked. A different gas regulator failing at this point, has absolutely no bearing what so ever on our new gas regulator, but we were still glad when it worked.

While we were looking around we saw yet another cruise liner, as quite a few anchor out at Dunmore East and ship passengers out, so that they can either catch buses to go to Waterford, or they can go for a walk around Dunmore East itself. The particular cruise liner we saw today was what Beverley called “fugly”, while my phrase was a little kinder in that I likened it to a block of flats on water.

While I looked after Salty Lass above decks, Beverley went down stairs to carry out crew tasks such as

• Fill in the log book
• Listen to weather reports
• Respond to emails
• Make meals, in this case a soup and a roll.

One of the emails that we received was to say that we had some money in our Kofi account. It’s really nice to receive gifts like that and we talked about what we were planning to spend it on, namely a subscription to Navionics so that we could update the charts with anchoring information. We feel that this is a good use of the money as it will help other sailors.

While we were sailing we added an extra to the main. To do this, we:-

• Take the wind out the main sail - We can either do that by going to wind or set the main sheet so that the the sail is straight into the wind. As long as the main is close to the centre of the boat when there is no wind in the sail then if is fairly easy to either add or remove a reef. However, if the angle of the sail is over too much then there is too much pressure on the slides and they are a beggar to move. We also do a combination of the two manoeuvrers. It just a case of seeing which move is best, in the conditions, but what you really want is to be able to reconfigure the main without putting the engine on.
• Adjust the lines - Once you have the wind out of the sail then it just a case of using the main halyard and reefs to set the sail the way you want. We tend to adjust the ropes in stages, rather that adjust things all in one go. If we were racing or in a rush for some reason then we would do the lot at one go. Reefing in stages is more controllable, but slower.
• Set the sail – Once you have the sail configured the way you want, but the wind in the sail and set your sails

While we were sailing we saw a lovely display of dolphins, they are great to see and while we sailed along with them, they lifted our hearts and made us glad.

One of the other things that we talked about was redesigning Salty Lass, we are looking at ways in which we can improve storage aboard and keep everything neat, so we are looking to change one locker so that it is no longer a hanging locker, but has shelves in it instead. We are also looking to use a lee sheet to make the back berth into a single and storage, rather than the double that it currently is. There is also another space that we are not making good use of and by adding a bucket then the space should become useable.

One of the things, that I did while we were underway was check our passage as we had a variety of alternate places that we could go. So our first pot of call was an anchorage just before Helvick head, then our next was Ardmore which was our second. Our destination was hopefully Youghal, which is why I was keeping a keen eye on the tides as I wanted to be going in with the tide.

We did get into Youghal and we rafted to Auburn Lass on the river pontoon which is free overnight. There are also some mooring balls that are free for daytime use. The ones to the north have less tide than those to the south, but are shallower