Ireland Viking

Almost everywhere we have sailed with our 15-year old Cloud Walker-, we have encountered Norwegian sailors whose nautical expertise seems to have been handed down through the centuries from their Viking ancestors. It was therefore surprising that when we circumnavigated Ireland we did not meet a single Norwegian, nor see a single Norse yacht.

Ireland is just the right size to sail round in one season, with enough variety to extend this into several summer cruises each with its own charms and demands. It is easily reached under sail from Norway via Scotland, with good access by air to both the south and the north, and a yacht can be over-wintered in either at a choice of marinas. Its coastline, overlooked by steep cliffs and wild soft mountains, is deeply indented, littered with islands, and navigationally and meteorologically varied and challenging. Ashore, it offers a choice of remote peaceful anchorages, efficient modern marinas and picture-postcards harbours where the pubs are deservedly legendary. We became addicts of crab claws, cold with salad or hot in rich butter and garlic, washed down by the thick creamy dark local Guinness beside which any lighter beer is weak and tasteless.

Many a long discussion over Guinness and crab claws has failed to reach a conclusion about whether Ireland is better circumnavigated clockwise or anti-clockwise. It makes little difference, and is best decided by the state of the tide and the wind. We went clockwise. Our landfall after a 48-hour passage from Cornwall was Kinsale, a colourful and affluent south coast tourist trap of bars, restaurants and live music just west of Cork. A few miles further on, dolphins welcomed us to Baltimore, which treated us to a blue-skied but windy rest day of lazy walking through gorse and heather above sheer cliffs and swirling cantankerous rocks. Still in brilliant sun, deep green seas lapped gently against the notorious Fastnet Rock on our way to the south west corner of Ireland.

This could easily fill a summer cruise, with fairytale anchorages off soft steep fjords cutting deep inland. Tiers of shadowy hills rise like a theatre backdrop behind an idyllic anchorage at Adrigole and Glengariff's crenellated castle and lagoon, way inland up Bantry Bay. Castletown is a good colourful shop-stop, although we abandoned its bustling activity for a quiet night at anchor in Dunboy Bay below an ancient fort and the melodramatic ruins of a Victorian folly-castle burnt out by the IRA.

It is essential to get the tide right for the fastflowing short cut through Dursey Sound from Bantry Bay to the next long deep inlet. The sound is a grey wild place, appearing until the last moment to be a cul-de-sac between sheep-cropped grass and sinister rocks beneath steep cliffs. The narrows sucked us beneath a swaying cable-car past huge dark caves and boiling seas, then spewed us out for a gentler run across the broad misty mouth of the Kenmare River.

The entry to Derrynane, which competes with Glengariff for the title of Ireland's most picturesque anchorage, is even closer to surf boiling over jagged rocks. A carefully timed turn reveals a lagoon surrounded by bleak high rock face, soft sand dunes and gleaming beaches. Old black and white photos evoke the local past in the evening gloom of the only pub.

We had scarcely dared to hope that we would be able to land on Skellig Michael, which with its smaller sister 'skellig', or rock, was so ethereally swathed in morning's mist that they seemed likely to vanish if we looked away. Of all Ireland's many abandoned islands, this is the most spectacular, and the least likely home for even the hardy early Christian monks who lived just below its peak in beehive-shaped stone age huts. We took it in turns to land and make the strenuous 700-foot climb, and were rewarded with an incomparable sense of peace and magic.

Although it was still calm and windless when we left Skellig Michael, the wind gradually increased to twenty knots onto a rugged coastline with colours so strong that they hurt. We picked up one of several smart new yellow mooring buoys in Valentia's harbour, Knightstown, before treating ourselves to lavish crab claws and Guinness ashore.

Valentia, hugging an indentation of the mainland so closely that it scarcely seems an island, features in the shipping forecast, and purports to be one of the stations from which Navtex transmits its maritime weather reports and warnings. We were therefore surprised to be unable to receive these, and for some time assumed our Navtex was faulty, until by reading the instruction book (always the last resort) I discovered that the transmission actually came from Dublin, on the east coast.

Across a wide mountain and cloud fringed bay from Valencia is Dingle, a lively little accumulation of narrow streets with multicoloured shopfronts and houses. Folk music spills out of its innumerable bars and restaurants. Fungi, the dolphin who for fifteen years has been its main tourist attractions, surfaced alongside us just outside the harbour, and escorted us out again next morning, to the squealing delight of four fishing boats of tourists.

The further north one sails up Ireland's west coast, the wilder and more demanding it becomes, with a swift succession of weather often accompanied by dramatic cloud and light effects above purple mountains extending into the interior. All but a few of the islands fringing the coast have either never been inhabited, or have, not surprisingly, been abandoned, some by government decree, some voluntarily. Few have harbours, or even anchorages sheltered from more than one direction. All must be approached with caution, and yachts must be ready to make a rapid departure if the weather changes. We visited as many as wind direction allowed, although we did not always land.

With a brisk south-south-easterly under a bright squally sky we dropped anchor in sand out of the tide below Great Blasket's single small derelict village, keeping a careful eye from the cockpit on the tidal swirls in Blasket Sound. This can be wild and treacherous, and has been the downfall of bigger better vessels than ours, including a couple of Armada ships.

By mid-afternoon, when we sailed gently off our anchor, the wind had faded to occasional north-north-easterly puffs. By nightfall, evil rain squalls had blotted out the coast to the south and we had resorted to the storm jib, two reefs and cuppasoup.. Regretfully bypassing the Aran Islands, we sought shelter from a NE 4-5 at a south-facing mainland anchorage at Cashla Bay. This part of Galway is still firmly Irish speaking and makes few concessions to tourists

We retraced our route to the Aran Islands across a still grey calm sea to Kilronan, the only harbour there has even been in the entire group of islands. The tourists dispersed rapidly, either on foot or with hired bicycles, or on pony carts which explained the general aroma of horse dung. We bumped steeply by hired bicycle to two of the island's main prehistoric and historic sites, impressive in their simple grandeur.

The rain on our return to the Galway mainland was so torrential that the water's surface seemed covered in bouncing stones. There was to be a weekend regatta for curraghs, traditional Irish rowing boats of stretched tarred canvas ­ curragh being the Irish word for 'unstable' - and Galway hookers, black or tan sailed freighters which within living memory were used to carry everything to the islands, from turf and cattle to groceries and passengers. Even in such light winds that we had to tow one of the competitors to the starting line, the hookers' performance was impressive.

Overnight, the weather became as wild and damp as the rocks and weed surrounding our anchorage. A bracing sail ending with a spirited beat took us west to the colourful little tourist town of Roundstone, with ever-changing blue-green-grey views of the mountains of the Connemara National Park. The weather changed again, and I was tempted into the sea for an after-breakfast swim by its clarity and relative warmth (18oC) of the water.

It was still warm but becoming hazy when we edged carefully beneath the dramatic ruins of Cromwell's castle through a narrow entry channel alarmingly close to ferocious rocks into Inishbofin. The island's anchorage, one of the few sheltered from all directions, was relatively crowded, with three Irish yachts and one British already at anchor, frequent ferry boats, and a noisy smoking commercial rust bucket, the Pitbroch, off which vast jawloads of gravel were being unloaded onto the quay.

Our planned continuation of gentle island-hopping - Clare Island, Inishturk and Achill Island - was aborted when the forecast threatened 'fresh wind soon, possibly strong in south later'. Instead, we broad-reached comfortably straight for Blacksod Bay past forbidding cliffs with great puffs of downdraught. Grey cloud banks marched towards us from the south. After leaving the bay's solitary but bleak security, with the wind from the west we were able to make an island stop at Inishkea South. Thirty or so single storey stone houses in various states of disrepair above an idyllic sandy beach were reminders of the tough life their occupants had abandoned.

A moderate to fresh south westerly thrusting big rolling seas sideways at us gave us an almost too exhilarating sail between a string of islands and the mainland's glorious cloud-shadowed cliffs and mountains. We broad-reached into Broadhaven in the glow of a moody golden sunset. It was not a peaceful night, with heavy rolling on the rising tide. It was still into a NW 6 with a big lollop and a sky threatening rain that we set out again on a high speed approach to the fishing port of Killybegs. To port, Donegal's cliffs and mountains gradually opened up. Our NavTex came to life just before we left Killybegs: 'This is a Tes* Please **nore'.

Donegal is short of deep water anchorages, but rich in mountain scenery and navigational exercise, like the intricate passage to Burtonport, and the three mile tortuous narrow channel between dramatic rocks from there to the island of Arranmore. On passage to Gola, we kept a careful eye on Tagh, Brian and Una, three witches who were turned to rock on their way to set Arranmore on fire. If noone is watching, they may swim closer. The entry to Gola's South Cove between breaking rocks and steep pink cliffs is magical. Although the island was abandoned voluntarily in the 1950s, it seemed as if little needed to be done to restore its abandoned houses. A few had already had the holiday home treatment.

Blue whooshing seas and visibility of more than forty miles accompanied us to Ireland's most isolated offshore community on Tory Island, which narrowly escaped official evacuation after a major storm in the 1970s. The notoriety of Tory's cattle rustlers is the derivation of the term 'tory' as a term of political abuse for members of the British Conservative Party. Painting rather than cattle stealing is now the local preoccupation.

Although the south, south west and west coasts are the best known and most varied of Ireland's cruising grounds, the north is not without variety and charm, and tides which must be taken seriously. Of all the excellent meals we had in Ireland, the best ­ and the most expensive ­ was in the elegant seaside resort of Portrush. Cloud Walker went gently aground in the entrance to the tiny harbour of Rathlin, Ireland's most north easterly island, and again on our way south in Carnlough, in spite of the adequate depths shown in the otherwise excellent Irish Cruising Guide. (Its two volumes are a 'must.)

Probably the best, but not the cheapest, place to winter a boat or arrange a crew swop is the marina at Bangor. The east coast is gentler than the west, but by no means without excitement ­ the wind against tide effects in the mouths of sounds and rivers, for instance, or the tortuous entries to new EU funded marinas, with the Morne mountains in the background. The Irish Sea is changeable and governed by strong tides. Towards the end of our circumnavigation, huge translucent seas flung us wildly past the rocks known as the Bishop and Clerks and caused havoc with the cutlery container. By the time we crossed our outward path a few hours later, it was as calm and sunny as if there had never been a breath of wind or a breaking wave.

Off the Eddystone Lighthouse, 9 miles off the Devon coast on our way home to the Solent, we were boarded and searched by three sinister black-clad British Customs officers. 'Did you see any boats behaving oddly in Ireland?' one of them asked. I consider it very odd that so few Norwegians sail in the wake of their Viking ancestors who founded Ireland's main eastern seaports, and no doubt visited many of its multitude of anchorages.

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MaritimeTjenester@WayNorth.org