With such a passion for sailing, I’m not supposed to feel seasick. These are tame waters compared to what we will face in a month when we cross down to the Canaries. But the human body is a complex and confusing piece of machinery; and, as we head out from Port Ellen in the pre-dawn darkness for Ireland, my stomach says it would much rather be laying in bed on terra firma. But forward progress is important. Ireland appears faintly in the distance to port as the sun starts to rise behind us over the Scottish island of Islay where we had, just the day before, bid adieu to our friends Suzy and Dave. Our intention was to sail across the top of Ireland and continue on around the northwest corner before heading down the west coast with an ultimate destination of Kinsale, a total distance of 400 miles. From Port Ellen there are two routes, one west then south – the present course we were on – or south through the Irish Sea past Dublin and then west along the south coast of Ireland, with the unfortunate scenario of beating upwind to get to Kinsale. On the flip side, the west coast is completely exposed to the wrath of the North Atlantic. We would no longer have the benefit of an inner route like we enjoyed along the coast of Norway, nor the route inside the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. But, if we could handle the west coast, there was promise of many interesting headlands along the prominent peninsulas such as the Donegal and Dingle, and many more islands to choose from. So westward ho we went.
