The crossing of the Irish Sea had always featured in my plans as one of the major passages for the circumnavigation. Although we were under almost no time pressure and should therefore be able to avoid bad weather, the Irish Sea was the main reason I had hired a life raft and I had initially planned to head up to Milford Haven in order to make the crossing as short as possible, across the St Georges Channel to Wexford or Waterford.
However, the stable weather system and prevailing Easterlies had persisted and it made no sense to beat upwind from the Scillies back towards the Bristol Channel and Milford Haven, far less painful to cross direct. Distances to Wexford, Rosslare, Waterford or Cork were all fairly similar, at around 140 miles which, at a planning speed of 5 knots, gave a passage time of 28 hours.
With an easterly breeze we should have no problem ‘laying’ Waterford but if the wind backed around towards the North we had the option of heading straight for Cork. Our loose plan was to spend a couple of days in Waterford (a town centre marina was shown in the almanac), then head down the coast, possibly spending a night in Youghal and then on to Cork where we would leave Little Scarlet while we returned home for a few days.
A departure from Tresco at 0800 meant we had benefitted from a good sleep and should arrive off the coast of Ireland well after dawn the following day. Once again we were fortunate with the conditions. With just a gentle swell and the breeze as forecast from the East at around 15 kts we made steady progress with just a few dolphins for company. By mid-morning we had lost mobile and therefore internet coverage so we listened to music, read and generally tried to avoid getting too bored! By mid afternoon the wind had backed a little and was dying away so we put the engine on and maintained our planned heading – towards Waterford. Overnight we adopted a three-hour watch routine. For me the time seems to pass much faster at night time – there’s lots of stars and planets to gaze at but very little shipping close to us, just the odd trawler and a distant Brittany ferry from Cork heading to Roscoff and it was extremely cold! It was good to see the sun rise and within an hour we were able to welcome a passenger, a swallow that we think was either extremely young or old but either way it was tired and seemed grateful for the ride. As the pictures show it seemed to have very little fear of us, exploring both the cockpit and the cabin.
As we approached the Irish coast we followed the accepted flag etiquette and hoisted an Irish Tricolour on the starboard crosstrees. There is no legal requirement to fly the flag of a country that is being visited but it is a gesture of courtesy that is widely followed – a nice tradition.
We passed Hook Light, at the entrance to the Waterford river at around 1100 and then spent another three hours heading up the river to Waterford itself where we secured alongside a pontoon adjacent to the city centre. We were tired but extremely pleased and satisfied with ourselves that we had arrived in Ireland after such an uneventful crossing.
