We had planned to make a 06:30 start to catch the ebb stream and escape over the river sand bar, before the tide dropped too much. However the boys went walkabout (in search of an open loo) and we didn’t get away until 07:15. Mutter .. mutter ..
Managed to get over the bar without the low depth alarm sounding for too long and by 07:40 were steering for the inside of Horse Rock. By 08:30 we were abeam of Seven Heads and then onwards towards Galley Head. Wind on the nose, so motoring and making 5.2kn over the ground.
At
the entrance of Glandore we followed the advice in the ICC Sailing Directions to
‘avoid Adam and hug Eve’ – in other words to steer wide past Adam Island
to avoid rocks and to steer close to Eve Island, which has deep water beside it.
Whereas Adam Island was obvious, Eve Island was difficult to spot initially. But
the next series of rocks ‘The Dangers’ were all well marked by green
pillars.
There was a very Middle Eastern styled Kilfinnan Castle to starboard approaching Glandore, but Glandore Castle, which was an obvious landmark to head for according to the chart, was much harder to see, as it was surrounded by trees.
By 11:45 we picked up a visitors mooring at Glandore. Distance travelled 22nm.
Punt launched and the boys went off to find an onshore loo and get their first experiences of rowing. They almost didn’t get back to the boat against the prevailing wind but were able to grab a rope, which was floated out to them from the back of the boat.
We then fitted the outboard and motored across to Union Hall for a late lunch.
In the late afternoon, we helped a single-handed sailor to get his mooring rope attached to a visitors mooring. We came to realise that visitor moorings were not very user friendly for single-handed boats nor for boats with a high freeboard, where the crew cannot reach down far enough to get a mooring rope through the eye of the buoy.
We had dinner aboard and later in the evening the skipper caught a mackerel and used it to bait the lobster pot. Then out came the cards!
That night we discovered a downside of using visitor moorings – it bumped repeatedly against the hull during the night, sounding like someone kicking a football against the side of the boat. First on the port side, then peace for a while and then it started again on the starboard side.