Relaxing in Kinsale Ireland
31 May 2000 | Kinsale Yacht Club, Kinsale, Ireland
Hello everyone! We're in the midst of what we thought would be standard Irish weather, a Force 8 gale yesterday and fog, wind and rain today. The temperature's in the high fifties and outside the day has a raw, damp edge to it, but here on the boat the diesel heater's hard at work and we're enjoying a relaxing day reading, writing e-mails and listening to the rain on the coach roof. We've been in Ireland for ten days, and except for some quick showers that turn to sunshine in fifteen minutes, this is the first cold, rainy weather we've had.
It's a pleasure to be in a place where the economy is so incredibly robust. The Emerald Tiger, as they call the Irish economy, grew an astonishing 11+% last year. Job postings are everywhere, and they're actively recruiting workers from places like Newfoundland and India. Cork, about twenty miles from where we are in Kinsale, has become a leading producer of software, and we've been told repeatedly that Ireland is now the second largest exporter of software in the world. Cork's economy used to be agricultural, largely dairy oriented, but now pharmaceuticals have become a major sector in addition to high tech.
Kinsale is considered the gourmet capital of Ireland. Its dozens of restaurants include fine French, German, Chinese, American (The Shack - fantastic hamburgers!) and lots of great seafood places. We had lunch at a gourmet fish shop the day before yesterday - seafood chowder that's almost a bisque and a short list of the day's entrees all based around simple preparations of the still flopping catch of fish and seafood. I had the best Mussels Meuniere we've had since Hout Bay in South Africa.
In the pubs, the local Cork stout, Murphy's, is served in addition to Guinness and everyone asks how we like it compared to the rival stout. I find it strong and dark, without the heavy bitterness of Guinness, and both of us prefer it. But all the locals seem to be drinking Heineken. When I asked one florid Irishman about his he said, "We're EU now, remember." Another said, "Murphy's in the winter, Heineken in the summer."
Everyone insists on the medicinal benefits of stout. "Lots of iron!" "Doctors here prescribe a pint a day for pregnant women." "If the mother's milk's off, a pint of Guinness will put it right within a half an hour." We're still not sure how much to believe these local myths - the Blarney Stone is located only about twenty miles away from here at Blarney Castle. If one kisses the stone (upside down while leaning backwards holding steel rails), one gets the gift of "blarney" for seven years. Blarney is defined as pleasant talk meant to gently mislead... We can only assume that most of the locals have kissed the stone sometime in the last decade or so.
Evans went racing with the local Yacht Club last Sunday and a week ago Wednesday. They have an amazing community of racers - on Wednesday nights they get thirty boats out on the course, all crewed by not less than four people and some of the boats require 12-14 crew members. We calculated there must have been 200 people out racing. They didn't get back until 9:00, and race results weren't read in the Yacht Club bar until after midnight. But we're having a hard time adjusting to local hours. The sun doesn't set until after 9, and the twilight lingers until 10:30 or 11. We've been going to bed much later than usual for us - in the Tropics we went to bed and got up with the sun. If we did that here, we'd only be getting about four hours sleep right now, and we're still several weeks away from mid-summer's eve.
Kinsale is located about three miles up the Bander River. About halfway between the town and the sea lies Fort Charles. This "five point bastion fort" consists of an incredible series of walls, ramparts and battlements rising up from the river. It was built in 1680 to protect the town from attack by the French and a major battle was fought here when the Spanish Armada came to help the Irish break away from the British. The weight of history hangs on the hills here in crumbling and unnamed round towers and ring forts whose stories have been lost for centuries.
The town itself consists of a half-dozen narrow streets bracketed by the two long roads that line either side of the harbor. Where they almost meet at the harbor's head, they create a wedge which the rest of the streets of Kinsale connect in a sort of fan. Many of the streets are cobble-stoned, and most of the buildings are painted in beautiful but surprising colors - rich rose, pastel peach, delicate pink. Window boxes filled with late spring flowers adorn many of the houses; tiny gardens just large enough for a bench can be found tucked behind many buildings. In the late afternoon sun, everywhere you look could be a postcard.
We've been trying to arrange a European mobile phone which has kept us here in Kinsale a bit longer than expected. We'll be starting north on Saturday or Sunday, and we'll move as quickly as we can to Scotland so we can enjoy the Scottish islands for a month or so before the CCA cruise begins. As we expect to winter here in Kinsale, we'll have time to see more of Ireland then, though it's hard to pull ourselves away from such a delightful spot.
Hope this finds everyone in good health and spirits! Beth and Evans s/v Hawk