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An Adventure with Woodwork - July 1st

Saturday was a grey day looking like rainso we donned oilies and picked our way out of Baltimore putting the main up enroute. The southerly F3-4 was wonderful and by 9:40 Temptress was reaching just a little south of east along the coast, round Kedge Ledge but inside the Stags. A large French yacht was sailing nicely ahead and to seaward of us. Temptress was reaching at 8 knots and soon we realised we were overhauling the Frch boat. It was a blue hulled Nic’ 55 with 4 or 5 crew.

By lunch time the front had almost passed overhead and the sun was trying to put in an appearance. Temptress’s crew stripped off, swapping fluffy mid-layers for shorts. Suddenly the gentle noise of water swishing past the rudder changed. Kevin climbed down the transom steps and laid on the bottom one – at 8 knots he was a little too close to the water for comfort! I let go all sails and scrambled for a boat hook we’d run over an object that in a former life had been a box or a chair. It disintegrated under attack from the boat hook freeing the rudder and away as we reset the sails and tacked & gybed back onto course. By the time we had Temptress sailing nicely again the Nic had overtaken us- probably wondering what on earth we’d been up to.

We soon caught them up and as the wind moved aft decided to fly the asymmetric. Up it went but both crew & skipper were slacking and didn’t react quickly enough on halyard and sheet to remove a twist. Down came the wayward sail until sufficient pressure was released to free the twist – sheet in, release, sheet in, release - whilst the skipper hauled on the leech. Sheet in once more and it was free, filling nicely though there were still yards of halyard to wind up. Two exhausted crew tumbled back into the cockpit as George steered us onward. Eight knots plus all the way round the Head of Kinsale. Now we’re dead downwind and the asymmetric didn’t like it one bit we quickly doused it and a great soggy heap was dumped on the saloon floor. Out with a goose winged genoa but the wind was dying in a combination of setting sun and shelter behind the headland so soon we were motoring through the racing Dragons and into Kinsale Harbour somehow ahead of the Nic 55. This was to be our last Irish port – a couple of days here, exploring the lanes & byways by bike, a birthday celebration dinner, world cup football and a spot of shopping then back across the Celtic Sea towards Cornwall or even the Scillies if the weather held. But we will be back – what a fantastic sailing ground this coast is and there is more further north on the west coast we’ve not yet seen.

8:59 PM - Oct. 23, 2006 - post comment