Friday 5 August. Kilmore Quay to Polduff. 30 nm

Julian got up early to help Falkert who was off to Kinsail today, And then went back to his favourite chandler to buy black cicaflex.

The sun is still shining in a beautiful blue sky. Can’t believe it’s still so sunny! We left our berth about 9 ish and headed east. The wind was light and variable. We had the sails up, so it was a bit like lake sailing where the wind swings around a lot. One minute you’re beating then it’s behind you! One minute it was 3 knots then 15! It didn’t really matter as we had no particular constraints apart from the fact that we had 6 hours of favourable tide, which we didn’t want to run out of before rounding Cahore point. Just like the east coast of mainland England, there are sandbanks and shallow areas in banks just offshore. These have to be navigated through and round but are but a trifle compared to the Thames estuary! We passed on the inside of Tuskar rock lighthouse, which is off the corner of Ireland.. Carnsore point, and headed North. There are now wind farms again, much smaller and mostly on land. Some individual turbines dotted about on land and on the distant hills. The coastline looks very gentle in this sunny weather and light breeze. Green rolling hills and swathes of sandy beaches running along the shore. It’s a popular holiday resort area and you can see why… although I’m sure it doesn’t always look like this! On the way a little bumblebee alighted on our deck. He stayed a while and since he was a long way from the shore, I gave him some sugar. He stayed about an hour before flying off. 🤞 he’s ok. We had identified a couple of possible anchorages from the pilot and once passed Cahore point, we turned inshore towards a little village called Polduff which had been mentioned. Unfortunately the wind was still all over the place but forecast to go into the west which would be offshore. There was a small pier, a beach and an obvious village… even though we couldn’t really see what was there. The depth of water meant we were quite a way out beyond the pier. It was fine. A tad roly but we’re very used to it now. We watched people enjoying the beach in the evening sun, kids ( presumably) jumping off the pier into the sea, well into the twilight of the day. We enjoyed a sundowner on deck and I cooked chicken curry with green beans. We listened to some music, read, chatted and did crossword puzzles.

What I learned today…. that Polduff is a pleasant anchorage but the bottom was rocky so maybe it would have been better slightly further North of the pier???🤔 where the ⚓️ sign is on the plotter, and that when trying to do word puzzles, always write the tidy list they give you in a random way on separate bit of paper…. that’s how my brain works anyway!