Killybegs - fisher capital of Ireland 02 June 2023

 


We have not moved on today.  Repairs, recovery, and recreation have been the order of the day.

It started, as every good day should, with a full Irish breakfast at the Ahoy Cafe.  Right by the marina, extremely popular with the port workers, and excellent food.  Really good start. 


We then had some repairs to sort out.  The fresh water pump had got an airlock in it, which meant we couldn’t get water from the taps - so no showers, washing dishes (what’s the problem, I hear you say), washing hands - nathin! So Gordon spent a good part of the day working on this problem - and after many tries eventually got it sorted.  Shane worked on a serious seawater leak into the front cabin that left the mattresses and bedding wet.  We’re pretty sure this has been a long running problem that we just hadn’t recognised previously.  A number of likely sources of water ingress have been sorted - all are associated with heavy weather that brings water over the bows - and yesterday meant that we brought more water over the bows than ever before.  Brilliant sunshine today allowed us to dry out mattresses and bedding, so hopefully all will be well from now on.  We also washed the boat down - the salt build up yesterday was significant, and we worked on the manual bilge pump which has decided to stop working - at the end of the day we still haven’t resolved this problem - gives us something to do tomorrow.

Mary and Susie went to Fintra beach  - and, extraordinarily, Mary went for a swim!

Fintra beach

We have been blown away by the fishing business in Killybegs.  There are huge, brand new, fishing vessels in the harbour.  They are state of the art vessels.  Must be worth a fortune.


Apparently they spend 10 months of the year in port - they are not allowed to fish most of the time due to EU regulations and quotas.  The Harbour Master’s helper tells us that it’s really annoying because other nations vessel are out there continuing to fish.  Then he said that on the other hand they have really good roads in Ireland.  A fair trade-off.

One of the joys of coming to a place like Killybegs is that they they have a brilliant chandlers - a real man’s chandlers.  Gordon was in his element!

A spanner, shackle and socket set meant for BIG jobs!

Three identical green fishing vessels (worth 10s of millions of pounds each), obviously owned by the same company ( person), were called “Veronica”, “Lauren” and “Leila”.  Gordon speculated were they daughters, Shane wondered if they were mistresses.  We’ll never know.

Dinner this evening at the Boathouse - wonderful food.  Not cheap, but excellent.

No bird list today because we were working most of the day.

No route cos we didn’t move.

Sleep tight.  


















































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