I flew to Dublin on June 2nd to take part in the delivery of one of our boats back to Gosport. It was scheduled to depart at 4:00 a.m. on the 4th (favorable tides dictate departure times more often than not in any sailing in the North Atlantic) so I had the full day of June 3rd to explore Dublin.
I woke that morning to the sound of pouring rain on the deck above me. No matter. The top half of my foul weather gear was as good a raincoat as any possible.
I spent the day exploring the inner city, museums, and various churches such as St. P
atrick's Cathedral (the image at the top). I organized the day to finish at the Guinness brewery and took a tour that ended with at a bar at the top of the building, offering one a great view of the entire city to ponder while sipping your free pint. Not much was visible due to the heavy rain, but the Guinness was great. All over England, whenever I've ordered a Guinness, people will volunteer that it's best drunk in Ireland, and in Dublin best of all. It will taste even better there, I've been told so many times, since it's closer to the point of brewing. For the record, I couldn't tell the difference.Sailing home was uneventful, except perhaps that I'm beginning to notice a difference in how it feels to spend days on end on a heeling and heaving boat. The first time I spent four consecutive days on a boat last August as I helped sail the boats back down from Liverpool to Gosport at the end of the race, when below decks I felt like a rag doll in a tumbling dryer. Each unanticipated wave (which was every wave at that point in time) threw me left or right into bunks, hatchways, doors, people, ovens, ladders, invoking numerous bruises. This time around, ten months later, I felt more like a monkey in a zoo, utilizing momentum and now familiar handholds to swing in a constant rhythm that I dictated, effortlessly reaching any part of the boat I wished.
The only thing still the same then as now is my amazement with dolphins playing around our boat. This far north in the Atlantic, the dolphins here are what's known as Common Dolphins, unlike the Bottlenose Dolphins most people more readily bring to mind. Though they look a bit different, their personality is the same; playful, powerful, happy, and a delight to behold.
On this trip from Dublin, I had a spontaneous idea and tried something that turned out to have amazing results. I found that if
I knelt beside the railing at the edge of the boat and leaned over, holding my hand down as close to the water as I could, some dolphins would come closer to the boat and jump just beneath it, as if they were dogs looking to be petted. I tried to photograph this but the light was too dark next to the boat's hull. I could only capture them when they moved away from the boat a small distance.We got back to Gosport on the morning of the 6th and, after working with everyone else for most of the morning to clean the boat, I slept much of the remainder of the day and all the night. The short term effects of the watch system (four hours on, four hours off by day, three on and off by night) still debilitates me. From the start, this has been the only aspect of the voyage I anticipated I'd have to work to adapt to. Everything else (small space, lack of this and that, close proximity to relative strangers, lack of access to communication, dietary constraints, etc.) poses no problems in concept. Sleep deprivation, however, does. I assume I'll mange well enough eventually.
I got up at 4:30 in the morning on the 7th. I had the first of three flights to catch to journey to Nevis/St. Kitts in the Caribbean.
