Aleria's Adventures

We took our time and had French toast before pulling up anchor. It was glass calm at first, but soon we had about 10 knots out of the NW. The barometer climbed to 1028 as a high settled over us and below an anticyclone tracking to the north. In Mayo, the weather was abysmal but not here on the Costa del Cork.

The last time we were in Glandore, a fishing vessel slammed into Aleria amidships. It was not a good visit. Fast forward six years, and we thought we should go back to dispel our fears. We didn't want to tempt fate, but we did think that Glandore was a pretty nice place to visit otherwise.

I got up early to do laundry. Yep, on a Sunday morning in Kinsale. They upgraded their facilities at the KYC including laundry. When I got there, there were clothes piled everywhere and I thought I'd never get in. But the nice young man in the bar came down and unloaded everything. I bought coins for the washer and dryer (€4 wash and $3 dry - €7 per load compared with €16 for one load washed dried and folded in Dingle) and got myself in before anyone else! Yes! That's cruising experience at work. Doing laundry in exotic places.

Is that a sun trying to shine through? We got up early to get to Kinsale before the wind started to pick up into the high 20s gusting well into the 30s by 1400h per WindGuru forecast.  Met Eireann was forecasting a gale overnight and into the next day for our area and strong gale, possibly storm, north of us.

Lot's Wife, Baltimore entrance Kids having fun in Baltimore Harbour The morning after the gale was silent, flat flat calm, and sunny. Yea! Let's dry out and head over to Baltimore. We sailed in past kids having fun below Lot's Wife, the distinctive tower on the approach to Baltimore. We nosed in and realized there wasn't enough depth for us inside -- only 8 feet abd we draw 8.5. Where we'd have to anchor we'd be exposed. So we had a choice: Sherkin Island or on to Castletownsend. We chose the latter as we hadn't been there before. We motored, then motor sailed the short distance to Castle Haven and anchored in the outer harbour. It was a bit exposed but would do us well for the forecast for the night which was benign. No sooner had we anchored that small sailboats started appearing and sailing out. More and more emerged and we learned that soon we'd be in the middle of a regatta. Oh well. They'd all have to take us into account. We got

We'd have to be somewhere sheltered from the south and west by Monday when the next gale was due. We had choices: a) sail through to Kinsale or Cork or b) work our way out via Schull, Baltimore and/or Glandore.  We decided to stop in Schull as neither one of us remembered much about it. As it turned out, neither one of thought we'd ever been there before once we saw it!

I'm going backwards but I did not get a chance to fill in a few details about Bantry Bay. The Bay itself is lovely with high hills all around catching light in interesting ways. Aside from Adrigole and Glengarriff, there's a lovely marina on Bere Island servicing mostly sailing vessels. The approach to the marina is now marked so access is straightforward. Castletownbere on the other hand, as well as many small harbours along the shores, cater more to fishing vessels.