Portpatrick to Bangor. 07 September 2023

 

Portpatrick Passenger Pigeon 
Ectopistes lazeraterii - new to science perhaps.

Our route


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gola to Rathlin round the top 05 June 2023 updated at 19.10hrs

Image
  As we left Gola at 06.00 this morning  As we start the day, the weather could not be better.  Almost dead calm, sun coming up, no rain and cool but not cold.  Of course, what’s important on today’s trip is the sea state.  Rounding the west and north coasts of Donegal has always been one of our main challenges - it can be pretty rough up here.  However, as we start the day it couldn’t be calmer.  Fantastic.  The forecast is for the wind to pick up, but we hope we can get round Malin Head before it does. In the meantime, we’ve just passed Bloody Foreland on our right with Errigal just a bit inland, and we have Tory Island on our left.  We’re also passing a wee group of islands: (another) Inishbofin, Inishdooey and Inish Beg. Wonderful. Tory Island looking very close  08.00 Horn Head on our right looking splendid in the morning sun, with Dunfanaghy tucked in behind it.  Lots of Puffins. It’s got a bit colder (I suppose we are in the north now) with a gentle easterly breeze and a swell f
Read more

Gigha to Bangor the big leap 14 August 2023

Image
  Watching the 6am sunrise at Gigha Early start this morning to catch the tide.  We left Gigha pontoon at 06.00 with only the slightest of southerly wind, and no rain - all the rain had been used up while we sat outside having dinner yesterday evening. What a wonderful meal. Our progress south encountered an interesting array of sea states - all of them benign.  As we got close to Machrihanish we picked up an Atlantic swell that became quite lumpy, not rough but still the boat moved about quite a bit. Kintyre peninsula from the Machrihanish end. Beautiful morning.  Then as we reached the bottom end of Kintyre we encountered an area of quite rough choppy water - tide induced. This was soon followed by the rest of the Irish Sea which was dead calm, glassy calm for a lot of it. At the north end of the North Channel there was a 10 mile stretch that was thronging with seabirds in all directions.  Guillemots, Razorbills, Gannets, Kittiwakes and Storm Petrels, totalling thousands of birds. Gl
Read more

Killybegs - fisher capital of Ireland 02 June 2023

Image
  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
Read more