A school of Dolphins escorted us around a sun splashed majesty of imposing Tory Island – the only island in Ireland with its own king.
We had roared up the north-west coast overnight in 25 knots of breeze reaching a nerve jangling 14 knots of speed – in the dark – with spinnaker up - a real brown trouser job for Audrey at the wheel.
“Clip me on” requested Jo of Piero. “Clip on to me” said Labros, “we can drown together darling!”
Like a ferret following a rabbit the remarkable Paul by use of charts, sight, sense and “Intuition”, repeatedly found us breeze where there was none. Even in a ferocious 5 knot current around notorious Rathlin Island – which claimed another yacht only weeks ago (all crew being rescued).
From the Antrim Coast to Rathlin Island to the nearby Mull of Kintyre is but a short nautical hop. Another wind finding trick was to have Piero remove his cap where upon his 4 remaining ultra sensitive hairs never failed to find us breeze.
Martina’s cough has persisted all week , barking day and night, driving us all mad. We are thinking of consigning her to kennels in Wicklow.
Patrick and Niamh sang again last night. They were treated to prolonged applause which seemed to be the only way to stop them! For the next twelve hours we managed to claw our way past four boats up the fleet, this was while one watch was asleep – so we offered to go back to sleep to continue with this strategy.
We have gone banana and water mad in a frenzied effort to lighted the boat. Oh dear , no toilet paper left wasn’t part of the plan. No one is shaking hands now!
For the past 24 hours we have gently floated down east Ulster hitting speeds as low as 0.2 knots at times. Luckily this morning at 8am the wind filled in from the south and all the boats that have been duelling at close quarters took off. The final part of the race has begun with a frenzied dash to Wicklow…
