Blue Opal was antifouled on Thursday just gone, and lifted in to the water on Friday. We had hoped to bring her back to Dun Laoghaire on Friday, but the yard was rather slow in getting the process started – a late lift the day before had occupied the boat mover (a big yellow hydraulic trailer for lifting the cradle whole and moving it) overnight, and despite being told they’d be ready to start at 0900, the lift didn’t really start until almost 1000.
This delay in the lift meant we missed the tide window; I wanted to be out the mouth of the estuary no later than 1030, due to the rather large sandbar that shows up right where the river meets the sea. The channel is pretty deep right up to that bar, and then the depth under the keel shelves by about 3 metres in a few boat lengths. Not an approach to take at speed when you think you might not have enough water! Plus, we were aiming for the ebb tide to take us south, so getting stuck would be a bit more than “embarrassing”.
Unfortunately, while getting out of the concrete bay, the port side of Blue Opal bounced off of one of the concrete pillars – I hadn’t communicated well to K about where to be, I was caught out by a shift to port, and K was unable to prevent contact (8 tons is a fair bit of boat to hold off). Thankfully, it’s shallow damage and the yard’s hull/gelcoat/fibreglass guy said “yeah, easy, 1 hour maybe 2, alongside, no need to lift out”. Plastic boats are, generally, easy to repair. So, I’ll go back to Malahide in a few weeks to get that damage worked on, with the plan of a light polish this winter to touch up the work from two winters ago.
We finished off our Friday by getting a fish and chips each from Beshoff’s in Malahide, and going for a walk on the beach at the mouth of the estuary. Then an icecream each (really nice sunny day), and back home on the train with a plan of coming back on Saturday to sail south.
Saturday was a beautiful day for a sail, glorious sunshine. There was no wind to speak of from Malahide to Howth, but it started to fill in from the east as we went around Ireland’s Eye and headed east. Once we cleared far enough off of Howth, sails up/unfurled, bear away hard to starboard, and engine off – blessed silence.
The wind filled in more and more, and soon we were doing 6 knots (with a bit of ebb tide) on main and yankee. Apart from windless days, Dublin Bay was the flattest I’ve seen for a long time – barely any swell, just steadily increasing chop out of the east as the wind pushed into the bay.
We decided to go around Dalkey Island, with the intent of anchoring in the channel off of Dalkey for a bit to have lunch. However, the weather had other plans, and it started to grey over. A quick check of the wind forecast, and we opted to just run from Dalkey to Dun Laoghaire instead, and have lunch ashore.