This was to be a long day, with about 70 miles to travel to Kilmore Quay. Passage planning for this leg was easy, with little to worry about with tides, with currents rarely exceeding 1 kt on this stretch of coast. However, I did recall from the trip down that the tides were a bit stronger in what would be the final leg from off Waterford to Kilmore Quay, and we should be on that leg at the time of the north flowing stream, which would help us in the final couple of hours into Kilmore.

The decision to get up at 5 worked well, since the girls were up by 0545 and were rewarded with a perfect early sunny morning, ( considered by them to be a fairly pathetic reward for such an unreasonably early start), and we were on our way at 0650. We had the tide with us as we left Cork Harbour, accompanied by an Irish naval ship, and we were soon round Roches Point and on our way north east, from headland to headland.....Power Head, Ballycotton, Knockadoon Head , Ram Head and then Mine Head which was approximately half way.  We left Minehead some miles to port and struck off on a direct course across a large bay in the coast, including Dungarvan and Waterford, on a direct course to Kilmore. We were around 10 miles offshore for much of this, which would be our furthest point from land until we cross the Irish Sea for home.

Weatherwise this was a day of two halves. Until midday we had virtually no wind and blue sunny skies. Much lazing about and sun bathing as we motored up the coast. Big moment at 1038, as the log ( the total distance travelled by Moondog since launch last May) hit 2000 miles. Sent a text to Torsten at Sirius to confirm that the boat was still in one piece as it passed this milestone ( although no fault of Torsten and Sirius, this might have been a bit premature as you will see below...).

After lunch, the wind picked up to a nice F4 sometimes F5 from the SW. This is not my favourite sailing position, since we were almost on a dead run for the rest of the trip, and during the afternoon the sea gradually built up to a reasonable  chop from astern, which tends to give a rolling motion since there is no sideways force on the sail to keep the boat steady ‘ in the groove’. We tried various configurations to make the most of this and minimise roll. First it was main with gybe preventer and the genoa, but that was a bit hopeless, with a tendency to build up the roll rate with the main up. We could of course have gone up wind 20 degrees or so and had a cracking sail, but this was already planned as a 12 hour trip, and such tacking ( or more accurately gybing) malarkey was going to significantly extend this.

So, next try was to drop the main and just run on the genoa. As always, this was much less stressful and of course much safer with the main put away, and with it all concerns of gybes / booms meeting heads etc. Unfortunately we could only make about 4.5 kts with genoa alone, and reluctantly had to fire up the engine and motorsail under genoa at a very comfortable 6 kts with the engine purring at just 2000rpm. This also gave us enough way to significantly cut down the roll, presumably something to do with the lift we were generating with the keel at the greater boat speed.  Whilst the sailing purists would probably disapprove, this combination worked to provide a fast and very comfortable ride and I am sure was the best choice for us on this fairly long day passage, with crew new to the joys of sailing.

We approached Kilmore at around 1800 and it was noticeably easier to enter on this second arrival ( having stayed there on the way down).  This is a harbour entry were you have to put your faith in the guys who erected the transit posts on the shore, which you have to line up as you approach from the sea, to guide you on a safe ( ie rock free ) course to the concealed harbour entrance. No problems, and we turned into the narrow entrance, only to then find a big trawler doing some weird manoeuvre in the narrow entrance channel, having the effect of making it progressively narrower. Into reverse to stop and wait for him to finish whatever he was trying to do, and .....,.no reverse.  Regular followers of this blog will realise that I am not new to this experience, but it is good to appreciate this in different scenarios for maximum enjoyment. This time was particularly special, since I did not immediately realise that with reverse gone, as I selected the ( now non existent ) reverse , the wonders of Volvo engineering meant that the engine just speeded up in forward.

As it turned out, there was plenty of room round the trawler, ( and apologies to big blue trawler  and its crew, who probably thought we were mad ). Fortunately, Kilmore quay has a big trawler harbour before the marina, so we were able to just  shut the engine off and go round in circles until  we had slowed down, and then were able to drift into wind and coast up to a moored yacht and raft alongside it, with its crew helping us with lines.  Once tied up the marina was very helpful and we had an engineer lined up for first thing the next day to help us fix the problem, then off for food and drink.