We left Malahide to anchor just off Ireland's eye. The weather was beautiful and it was fantastic sailing weather. I left Beverley on the helm because the last time she was on the helm, she received a massive thumping and she needed something to restore her love of sailing. I was enjoying myself on the sheets, looking after the sails and trimming the main to the best of my ability.
It was however just a short sail because Ireland’s eye is just a short distance from the entrance to Malahide. Once we got to Ireland’s eye we dropped the hook and got on with things. We were not long at the anchorage when we realised that our laptop batteries were on the blink. Beverley’s battery was at 9% capacity while mine was a little better but at just 18%. Seeing as we need good laptop batteries to continue blogging I got onto a battery supplier and ordered them up. Now seeing as we were outside Howth I rang them first to see if I could use them as a delivery address. I rang at least three times with no answer while I could get the batteries delivered to Dun Laoghaire, so that is what I did.
The main batteries were doing fine however, the solar panels are now getting regular sunlight and were pumping in 11A. This meant that by lunchtime the house batteries were at full capacity and we could at least use our DC-DC convertors to power our laptops and charge our cameras.
We also looked to see if we could fly the drone from Ireland’s eye, but we were straight under the flight path of Dublin airport and although you are not banned from Ireland’s eye, you are requested to leave the birds in peace during the breading season. So with the trip to Ireland’s eye out and the planned trip around Lambay island out, due to a complete lack of
As we left Ireland’s eye I saw the little Westie which I remembered from our last trip to Howth. It made me feel quite glad seeing it. I also noticed how different the buoys looked with one green looking quite conical while the second was a lattice shaped buoy which in a half light looks like a can
As we continued motoring across Dublin bay, we collected a light house, by photographing it. This is our own personal little joke, because we know quite a few people who collect light houses and we are not yet decided if this is a good thing or something daft. If it is daft then we are all for it, but if it is a good thing then we will leave it alone.
We filmed our entrance to Dun Laoghaire because some of our viewers find that fascinating, so we have captured on camera a bad arrival. Beverley thought it was one of our worst, but I know for a certainty that it is not. Beverley’s arrival at the fuel dock in Bangor was a lot worse, but that was not captured on camera. I however know what I did wrong and Beverley knows what she did wrong and if we can learn from our mistakes then fantastic news.
We had only been in Dun Laoghaire a short while and we had got our new batteries and we had been invited to Royal St. George Yacht club for drinks which was very nice.
Royal St. George Yacht Club has a very impressive set up with a huge dingy yard as well as other yachts. We went down on the Saturday and they were still going out in dinghies, even though the sea state was rough but the outer harbour at Dun Laoghaire is pretty huge so the large outer sea wall mitigated the sea state to some extent.
While we were in Dun Laoghaire, we did a lot of paperwork like finding out where the we could get the weather reports from which is met.ie. We also added to a tourist map of Ireland all the radio stations along with various heads that they use in the weather reports. I did this little task because it helped me familiarise myself with the coast as I had no idea where various places were, like Mizen head and Loop head for example. Once I found out about the various heads for the weather, I updated our charts with the latest corrections as issues by the chart manufacturer.
We also received a bottle of wine from an anonymous viewer which was very nice.
