Cruising the South coast of Ireland
27 March 2001 | Crookhaven, Co. Cork, Ireland
Hello everyone! We've left our winter berth and are underway once again. It feels wonderful to be swinging at anchor each night and exploring new harbors each day. We're now about 50 miles down the coast, near the southwest corner of Ireland, in a small harbor called Crookhaven. Fastnet Rock stands six miles to the south, easily visible from the harbor entrance, and Mizen Head, where we turn north up the west coast of Ireland, lies less than five miles to the WSW.
This narrow harbor with its sleepy village consisting of O'Sullivan's, a post office/store/pub all in one, and a few hotels for summer tourists once served as the transition point between the "Deep Water" men and the coastal pilots who would skipper the sailing ships for up to six months - to Dublin or Liverpool or Bristol and back. Crookhaven had agents from every big shipping company who would have instructions as to where each cargo was to go, as the cargo would have been sold while it was enroute. It's hard to picture a dozen Indiamen at anchor in this harbor, no more than 500 yards wide and about two miles long, though only half of that has water enough for us let alone an oceangoing clipper ship. What a sight it would have been! Not surprisingly, piracy was a major economic activity along this coast, and two high square towers at the entrance were designed to keep watch for pirates and privateers.
We found Crookhaven, and Baltimore before it, still in winter hibernation - the season doesn't get underway here until June. Those we meet ashore are friendly and talkative, interested in where we've come from and where we're going - and how we make our money along the way. "Living off the interest, are ye?" the wizened fisherman or the publican asks with a wink. "Starving artists, more like," I say and they crack a long, slow smile, completely unconvinced.
Baltimore, our stop before this one, still functions as a fishing village, though hardly an Irish one. The French and Spanish trawlers have always fished this corner of Ireland and beyond, and it seems as if at some point they decided to move their families up here as well. Over the VHF comes a lively mix of Irish-accented French and Spanish and French- and Spanish-accented English. For half an hour yesterday morning, one returning trawlerman visited with each member of his family - his wife, his mother, his teenage son and what sounded like a three-year old child - in rapid and idiosyncratic French on the VHF channel we listen to for weather. Evans most admired the Fastnet Falcon, a 70-foot oceangoing tug that was away from the dock far more often than it was on it, and whose skipper was continually in need of three-day weather forecasts when trying to decide where to take his most recent tow. A constant six- to ten-foot swell assaults this coast, so sailing is difficult in anything less than 15 knots of apparent wind. That same swell must make towing anything of any size a challenge, and on Sunday the Fastnet Falcon reported breaking a towline out off the west coast.
Despite the meager living the sea now provides, this whole area is undergoing an economic boom thanks to the tourist and holiday trades. Ashore, construction of new cottages and bungalows proceeds apace, and in Baltimore the holiday homes are now supposed to outnumber the permanent residences. Given a winter population of less than 200 and the dozens of new homes we saw recently completed or in the process of being built, that doesn't seem unlikely. Here in Crookhaven, winter population 30, Public Notices have been put up on almost every small, protected piece of land asking for public comment on the building of everything from B&Bs to "self-catering accommodations" to luxury houses for the wealthy to visit for the two fine months of every year.
The winters here must be fierce indeed. Almost every house is tucked under a ridge or small hill protecting it from the southwest, and the branches of the stunted trees stream northeastward and look like hair teased out by a blow dryer. It's still early spring here, and only the low pine bushes of gorse are flowering, though the small yellow blossoms offer a bright counterpoint to the faded green of last summer's grass. In contrast to Kinsale and Cork, where daffodils rioted in every garden, only a few shelter here in the hollows near warm stone walls, out of the unfriendly winds.
We've been fortunate with the weather, having left on a window of, according to Evans' and the Kinsale harbormaster's assessment, ten days of stable easterly winds. We made our westing on those easterlies, though they were at times light forcing us to motor in the large, sloppy swell. Now, eight days later, we're getting some light westerlies, with the promise of stronger westerlies tonight. But we're at the corner where it no longer matters if the winds remember that SW is supposed to be "prevailing" - once round Mizen Head those winds will be just aft of the beam and we can ride them north to Bantry Bay, our next planned stopping point.
We're grateful for the fact that, at least so far, Ireland has not had a major outbreak of foot and mouth, and seems to be treating the whole thing much more seriously than the British. All sporting events, including sailing regattas, have been cancelled for the last month, and our progress down the coast has been carefully monitored by the officials who want to make sure they catch any English or French boats entering Irish waters. We chatted at length yesterday with the "Harbormaster at large" who covers this part of the coast. He's a worried man, as he feels the safety of Ireland's primarily agricultural economy rests, at least in part, in his hands. We were hopeful the whole thing would be over before we reached the north coast of Ireland, but we've become increasingly pessimistic that the outbreak will be contained in either England or Scotland within that time.
In any event, we're both well and happy and hoping this message finds you the same. Having left Kinsale, we'll be less in touch than we have been, as we'll be checking e-mail when we have good phone signals, which may mean once a week or so. But we will respond eventually...
Here's to anticipating summer breezes and warm sailing! Beth and Evans s/v Hawk