Falmouth to Dun Laoghaire, Ireland 

27th to 29th May 2022 

Where to start… We were so tired after our 268M passage to Ireland that it is only now that I can continue writing our blog. Our sail was not without ‘surprises’! We set off at 5:00 am on the 27th of May in time to catch the best tide to sail around the Lizard headland and Land’s End. Both headlands command respect. You can expect rough seas unless you sail very close to shore or at least 3M off. To round Land’s End, to catch the full north going tide you have to be only a quarter mile off, starting at Runnel Stone. 

Land's End seen from the sea

The day was beautiful. The wind was predicted to be light, however the direction was from the north and we would have to sail upwind all the way to Ireland. Our trouble started around Land’s End when two things happened. 

Firstly the shackle connecting the staysail to the sheet became undone and the sail was flapping madly. To attach a new shackle, first we had to find a spare one. To do this we had to take the sail down and lash it to the railings. I was worried to see Stephan on the foredeck with the high waves from the Atlantic combined with the remains of the swell from the strong wind of the previous day. But inching his way forward with our new three point harness, he managed to do this without problems. We reconnected the staysail shackle and hoisted the sail back in its track once we were safely around Land’s End in the Bristol Channel.

Atlantic swell west of Longships lighthouse

 The second thing that happened coincidentally around the same time was that our wind indicator stopped working. Without hesitation we thought that we had lost the top masthead unit in the rough sea. We didn’t think any further about it because in fact we can sail less accurately, but we can manage without it anyhow. We have done it many times before. 

Is it still there?...hard to see!

So we continued on our way peacefully through the night, keeping our watches three hours on, three hours off, negotiating who would have to do the ‘dog watch’ from 1:00-4:00am. In the morning we reached The Smalls lighthouse, west of Milford Haven. 

 In St George’s Channel the wind picked up from the NE up to F5. We had a wonderful sail trying to tack every time we got near the traffic separation near the Irish coast. We did this for 3 hours, but with our tacking angle being above 100º we made very little progress towards our destination. The issue was that every time we had good strong tide pushing us northwards, we had the wind against the tide causing rougher waves. Easy Rider tends to slow down to less than 3 knots in such waves… so we decided to help with the engine after all. 

stunning cloudscape in St George's Channel

 Meanwhile our ‘super duper’ B&G navigation system switched off suddenly several times during our journey. Why?! And around 70M away from Dublin our auto pilot stopped working! That was much more unpleasant than the wind indicator. It meant steering by hand for 18 hours at a time when the wind increased once more to F5 gusting 6. At least one good thing was that the wind had veered slightly east and we could sail a course towards the Irish coast. 

Dressed for the cold night ahead

The last night we sailed taking half hour turns at the wheel until we finally reached Dublin Bay by midday on the 29th of May. We were totally exhausted when we arrived, but happy to have made it. 

It was only in the morning, after 10 hours sleep, that we discovered that we still had a wind indicator on top of the mast… and that it was the navigation electronics which were probably at fault! 

 Now we are waiting for a B&G electronics specialist to come and see what’s wrong. We probably will have to order a new transducer… with the supplies as they are at the moment, we wonder how long we will have to wait… 

 One very funny thing happened when we checked in at the harbour office: the very friendly woman who was taking our fingerprints (to be able to open the front door) took mine first and when Stephan’s fingerprint didn’t work she said ‘try rubbing your finger in your hair’. We looked back puzzled, laughed, and it did work then! That has now become our motto: when something doesn’t work we say ‘try rubbing your finger in your hair’!