Beth and Evans

19 September 2013 | Mills creek
06 August 2013 | smith cove
04 August 2013 | cradle cove
31 July 2013 | Broad cove, Islesboro Island
24 July 2013 | Maple Juice Cove
06 June 2013 | Maple Juice Cove, Maine
02 June 2013 | Onset, cape cod canal
20 May 2013 | Marion
18 May 2013 | Marion
16 May 2013 | Mattapoisett
10 May 2013 | Block ISland
02 May 2013 | Delaware Harbour of Refuge
16 April 2013 | Sassafras River
01 April 2013 | Cypress creek
06 March 2013 | Galesville, MD
20 August 2012 | South River, MD
09 August 2012 | Block Island
06 August 2012 | Shelburne, Nova Scotia
20 July 2012 | Louisburg
18 July 2012 | Lousiburg, Nova Scota

Down the Irish Sea

19 August 2000 | Royal Cork Yacht Club, Crosshaven, Ireland
Hello everyone - We're back in Irish waters and back in shorts and tee-shirts, over 250 nautical miles south of our last reported location. Our last few days in Scotland proved as wondrous as the rest of the summer. Faced with a forecast of another week of southerly winds, we decided to explore a bit more of the Inner Hebrides while we waited for a favorable breeze. On our way north at the beginning of the summer, we had sailed past two large islands - Islay (pronounced eye-luh) and Jura - which parallel the top half of the forty-five mile long Kintyre peninsula. We now decided to take the opportunity to visit these islands and round out our summer tour of the Inner and Outer Hebrides.

To reach our anchorage on Jura, the northernmost of the two islands, we passed through the Sound of Islay, a narrow channel between Islay and Jura where the current runs at 4-5 knots, around the back of Jura and into Loch Tarbert, a six-mile long loch that very nearly cuts Jura in half. For the first two miles of the narrow loch, we dodged and wove through a minefield of partially and completely submerged reefs and rocks, lining up a series of white painted beacons ashore and following the bearing until it intersected with the next leading line. Blondie Hassler, the intrepid singlehanded racer who more or less invented wind-driven self steering, set up the original leading marks several decades ago, and hundreds, if not thousands, of boats have relied on them since. Once through this constricted channel, we found ourselves in an almost completely enclosed lake some two and a half miles long and a half-mile wide. Beyond this, a narrow channel no more than 200 feet wide which can only be safely negotiated at slack water leads to a series of virually land-locked pools. This loch feels every bit as remote as the Outer Hebrides - there are no roads and only two (apparently abandoned) buidlings. The land around the loch was also like the Outer Hebrides - boulder strewn bog with three 2,500-foot high mountains to the south - the Paps of Jura. George Orwell wrote "1984" in a small cottage near the northern tip of this island - his "big brother" technological society seems completely out of keeping with this isolated and untamed landscape.

After three days in Loch Tarbert, the weather looked as if it might cooperate soon, so we got up at 5:30 to catch the current south and raced through the Sound of Islay at 10-10.5 knots. Over the course of the hour or so as we passed under the Paps of Jura, clouds spilled out of Loch Tarbert and washed over the tops of the rocky, gray peaks like a slow-motion breaking wave, engulfing them in a swirl of white froth, then pulled back again and disappeared leaving a clear blue dawn sky in their wake.

The northern half of Islay shares Jura's topography of rugged, boulder-strewn land, steep cliffs and sea caves. But to the south, the land lowers and softens until it turns to pleasant, rolling hills covered with the gold and green of cultivated fields speckled with white sheep and brown cows. Of all of the Hebridean islands, Islay seems the most abundantly endowed for the production of whisky - with abundant water, fertile ground for growing barley and lots of peat for malting (or germinating) the barley before fermenting it. Though we only sailed around a third of the island's circumference, we passed four picturesque distilleries, their neat white buildings offering a lovely counterpoint to the lush island's golden fields and green glades. Islay is home to close to a dozen distilleries whose products contribute the smokey, peaty taste to most of the best-known blended whiskies.

By the time we reached our anchorage on the southeast coast of Islay, the forecast called for twenty-four hours of favorable winds. After a three-hour walk ashore to view the intricately carved, 1,200 year old Kildalton Celtic Cross, we raised anchor for a fast run south. We very much wanted to reach Crosshaven, a suburb of Cork and home to the Royal Cork Yacht Club, in time to rendezvous with John Neal and Amanda Swan aboard *Mahina Tiare* - a 46-foot Hallberg-Rassy which they use as a sail training vessel. Between them, John and Amanda have amassed over a quarter of a million offshore miles including a dozen roundings of Cape Horn. After sailing from Seattle in March of this year, they transited the Panama Canal in May, left the Virgin Islands in June and made landfall in Kinsale, Ireland in early August. They plan to leave tomorrow with six new crew members aboard on the next leg of their voyage which will take them up the west coast of Ireland to the Outer Hebrides down the Sound of Mull and to the Caledonian Canal. I met Amanda at SailExpo last year and talked to John on the phone the year before that - but by shoreside standards we didn't really know each other at all.

We arrived here yesterday after a 36-hour run from Stangford Lough on the east coast of Ireland, had dinner with John and Amanda last night and added a few notations to their Scottish charts over coffee. This afternoon, they spent a couple of hours with us going over their Patagonian cruising notes and sharing insights on everything from where to get diesel fuel to what items the isolated lighthouse keepers appreciated from visiting yachties. This quiet camraderie and unstinting genoristy are the hallmarks of the cruising community and one of the things we missed the most during our four years ashore.

So we're back in Ireland and back in summer weather. Somewhere between Islay and here we shed the extra layers we'd started wearing in Scotland, and today temperatures reached short-sleeved shirt and shorts weather - something that only happened a couple of times in Scotland. Amazing how much difference four degrees of latitude can make! Of course, there's a downside. It actually gets dark at 8:30 at night... We're looking forward to a couple of weeks cruising the south and southwest coasts of Ireland before returning to Kinsale in mid-September when Beth flies back to the States.

Here's hoping summer lasts well into September - Beth and Evans s/v Hawk
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Vessel Name: Hawk