The little brown boat Chico, went in the water today. Officially start of summer or finer weather season when the boat goes in the water. It was not without incident. The engine wouldn’t start. So we had to be towed to the marina. For shame. This was the just serviced engine that wouldn’t start. Suffice to say, we were not impressed. I am campaigning for a new engine, though I’m in trouble for upapproved spending of joint account money on plants. The joint account is normally just for groceries, mortgages and stuff like, oh, I don’t know, beer, burgers and petrol. Whether we get a new engine depends on when SK suffers amnesia and forgets that I spent the equivalent of 81 cents a day multiplied by a certain number of days on plants. An anniversay of life in our current home is coming up. The home needed presents. Plant presents. The boat got new sails last year that cost ten times as much as the plants. The house deserved the new plants.
As an aside, I’m writing this on SK’s new computer. It came with a new monitor that is 22 inches wide. A touch on the two wide side for my liking. It’s a major eye adjustment.
SK and I helped deliver a boat to Kinsale this weekend. It was an interesting trip, a run down to Tuskar and then the wind into our faces all the way to Kinsale. Still, we did some nice things, like pass Cork Harbour‘s entrance, which I had never done before. Here I am passing my native harbour and toasting it. You can just make out the spire of Cobh Cathedral.
The sky was very pretty going along the Cork coast as we approached Kinsale harbour.
More pretty sky:
Kinsale in dusk.
I learned on this trip that the East Coast of Ireland is pretty boring. It gets prettier as you move around Tuskar and towards Cork. Of course, Cork Harbour and Kinsale are only the gateways to all the prettiness of West Cork, the boats final destination in a few weeks.
SK and I sailed to Malahide on Friday evening. We were treated to a lovely sunset after some rain en route. This was unchartered territory for us, as we had never been beyond Bray Head to the South or Howth to the North. Chico made it up and down in good time. Our new sails mean we now average about 4 knots per hour as opposed to the three knots per hour we made with crappy ancient sails last season. It rained on the way up, but coming back yesterday was blissful. It was worth going up to see the Lambay Race fleet, even if our lateness in deciding to do it meant having to spend the night in Malahide rather than Howth. In Malahide, we heard some of the Radiohead concert and slept like the dead aboard the boat.
Here we are underway. We were passing Ireland’s eye. You can just see Lambay Island in the distance at the end.
