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Glenarm is a pleasant Antrim village which we’d visited before. Election night was spent there, watching news of exit polls before retiring to bed, then getting up again at 3am to watch the momentous Labour landslide materialise. Back to bed for a couple of hours before departure at 7.30 am for Bangor, 24 miles on, just into Belfast Lough. A decent though gusty breeze got us going at well over 5 knots under a double reefed genny through the water, plus 2 knots of very welcome south-going tide all down the Larne coast. The coast here is low-lying and unspectacular – we were certainly missing the ethereal misty folds of mountains in Scotland. Crossing Belfast Lough we could faintly pick out the gigantic iconic Sampson and Goliath cranes. Bangor marina is vast – 850 berths – and very impersonal. The town had little
interest other than an abundance of large forbidding-looking churches and
some rather lovely Walled Gardens.
![]() However, the icing on the cake of our stay in Ardglass was our meeting with the parents of a neighbour of ours – who turned out to be a brilliant and welcoming ‘shore team’. On the worst day of very heavy weather they invited us for lunch at the golf club – the perfect thing to do on a day of torrential rain and wind, and generally offered support and helpful local knowledge. Strong south westerlies, which would have been welcome had we been continuing southwards down the coast, were a concern because we planned to go into Carlingford Lough which has a rocky shallow and narrow entrance with fast running tides. Strong winds coming straight out of the lough against a fast ingoing tide could cause dangerous conditions in the entrance. In fact we later met the crew of a boat which had experienced 4 metre waves on entering the lough. At a point just north of Carlingford Lough the tide ebbing and flowing between the Atlantic into the Irish Sea from the north meets the stream ebbing and flowing from the south – creating the highest tidal range and strongest tidal flows of the coast. In the event all went perfectly on a quiet sunny day. A trio of seals just outside Ardglass harbour entrance watched us depart as we turned towards the Mountains of Mourne, coming beautifully down to the sea. We entered the lough through the marked channel, carefully counting up the buoys to arrive into Carlingford marina. The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland runs down the middle of Carlingford Lough so we had now entered the Republic of Ireland – however, no formalities were involved. In conversation with the marina staff in advance of our arrival Chris had raised this issue, to be told that they had no instructions regarding foreign yachts. Chris said he wouldn’t ask too many questions, meeting with the response that neither would they!
As we lost sight of the
Mountains of Mourn to the north, we were now looking at the bulk of the
Wicklow Mountains southwards beyond Dublin. We spent three days exploring
the sights of Dublin, berthed in the vast Dun Laoghaire marina – a 25 minute
train journey away.
Pressing on south we set off for Arklow – a strange passage in visibility of one mile giving us the illusion of being in a bubble, relieved only by our passage through Dalkey Sound – where we made fast progress through the narrow passage between the elegant looking little village of Dalkey with its castle, and the island dominated by one of the large numbers of Martello Towers in these parts. Sad not to have any sight of the Wicklow Mountains but compensated for by a 7.4 knot average for the 35 mile passage with the tide. Arklow, at the mouth of the River Avoca is well protected, with a long pontoon on the river bank for visiting yachts. Pleasant little place – a bridge of 19 arches and plenty of live music, but not of the sort we wanted. Instead we spent an afternoon in a pub watching the All Ireland Hurling Final on TV, in the company of three girls from County Clare – whose team won! Here we needed to make a final decision on where to cross the Irish Channel – from Arklow to Bardsey Island on the western tip of north Wales, or to Fishguard in South Wales, possibly via to Rosslare. The east coast of Ireland is generally quite shallow, with few places to anchor, so this phase of our journey was mainly marina hopping. It is not regarded as a cruising area - we hadn’t expected this to be a spectacular trip and it wasn’t. However, it was good to visit some new and interesting places, and although our quest for traditional pub music was a little disappointing, we enjoyed good craic in every pub we visited! Julia, Chris and Aremiti |