Guinness, great gastronomy and only a few minor gaffes

I was humbled and excited to be invited to join as crew for a small part of this Northern voyage of adventure on board Belle Colombe. I join only for the leg from Ireland to the Faroes, and so it was on Sunday the 17th May that I flew from Heathrow to West of Ireland Airport at Knock.

Belle Colombe was anchored in Clifden Bay - which meant a taxi ride through the Connemara National Park. Connemara in the West of Ireland is a rugged, beautiful and largely mountainous region with agriculture, such as it is, consisting of nothing more than a bit of low intensity sheep farming.

Clifden is the town where Messrs Alcock and Brown landed after having completed the first successful crossing of the Atlantic by air in under 72 hours in June 1919. So it was the bar in the Alcock and Brown Hotel that I met the skipper for a pint of the black stuff before heading to the boat out in the bay.

The moment we were on board, and having said hello to Charles, Mark and Tim, we weighed anchor and headed out of the bay and North to Inishbofin for the night. The entrance to the very protected natural harbour of Inishbofin is challenging but as ever a combination of good preparation and detailed navigation, coupled with an active Navionics and Raymarine, we navigated the entrance easily. We arrived with plenty of time for a pint of Murphys in the Beach Bar before walking up the hill to the Dunmoore Hotel for supper and tremendous views South.

On Monday we left Inishbofin and with a following wind most of the way we had a tremendous sail to Broadhaven. It rained most of the morning, most of the afternoon, and all night. We anchored in the Southern end of the broad and wide and relatively shallow bay for a peaceful night at anchor despite the breeze.

On Tuesday morning we upped anchor and left Broadhaven. We very soon had the sails up and with the Southerly wind still with us, we headed North weaving our way between the fishing boats in the entrance to the bay. Once out of the bay we could head ENE directly for Killybegs, a distance of some 55 miles. Another tremendous sail with decent breeze and intermittent rain. The forecast was for the wind to die off in the early afternoon - and so it did, so with regret the iron topsail was fired up and we motor sailed the last 20 miles.

Killybegs is one of the largest fishing ports in Northern Europe and the size of some of the fishing vessels is very impressive. They have been known to travel as far as the East Coast of the US in search of fish. It is also an impressively clean and tidy town with a lot of money being spent developing the marina area. We learnt that if we had arrived next week instead of this, we would have been amongst the first to enjoy the marina facilites!

Trawler fleet alongside in Killybegs

Directions from Inishbofin

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