As we left Crookhaven on the southwest corner of Ireland, we weren’t sure if we were going to make it a little way up the coast to Castletownshend, or rather further to Kinsale – or even possibly head off for an overnight passage to Wales! We quickly dropped the idea of Wales since we were planning to arrive in Caernarfon, at the southern end of the Menai Straights – which prove to be a significant navigational challenge, requiring optimal weather and being in time with the tides to cross Caernarfon Bar – we’d leave that challenge for another day. Instead we opted for Kinsale – cruising mecca of Ireland. We had a super sail, in lovely weather – beam reaching in 15 knots!

We’d been to Kinsale before – in 2013 – when we tied alongside at the yacht club. This year, being cheap skates now, we decided to anchor a little upstream of the yacht club. We found a spot with plenty of swinging room, anticipating needing a lot of scope to contend with the current that can flow here…  we deployed the anchor and it immediately disappeared under our keel and we were abruptly brought up short as it bit. The wind against tide was playing havoc with our technique – especially when I got the snubber attached – which went down our starboard side, while the chain went down the port side! This just wasn’t going to work, so we opted for the middle ground and took a relatively low cost £10/night visitor’s mooring.

At our last visit to Kinsale, OCC Port Officer Flor Long outdid himself by getting our American propane bottles filled. Unfortunately for us, Flor was in England for a Grandson’s christening, but Dingle PO Harvey Kenny once again came to our rescue and whisked us off to the propane store, where unfortunately we learned that the filling opportunity no longer exists. We’ll have to make other arrangements when we get to Whitehaven.

Harvey was again a super host and took us into Cork University where he studied law. It was lovely to wander around the gracious old limestone buildings with throngs of young students making their way to classes.

We met up with Layton and Meghan, a young American couple living and working in Kinsale, with aspirations to go cruising… It was certainly nice to be able to offer encouragement to such a lovely couple – I hope they get out there and enjoy the freedom of cruising.

We were in Kinsale for just under a week when the winds blew favorably for us to head along the south coast and position ourselves for a short crossing to Menai right at the south west corner of Ireland in Dunmore East. We anchored there and stayed a couple of nights – it was pretty enough, but not much to do… Our weather window to Menai opened up and we did an overnight passage using the favorable tides in the horrible Irish Sea, and arrived right on high tide at Caernarfon Bar, with almost no wind, so its’ crossing was uneventful. We’re back in the UK…