Day 73

We left Quoile just before first light at 4.45 am.  The sunrise was spectacular as we glided down a very still Lough.  The current to the mouth was very fast, we made our exit without any issues slightly ahead of schedule and set off for a long day to Carlingford Lough.

On the way as we had some time to lose to arrive at Carlingford at the correct tide, we stopped off in Newcastle Bay, the home of our Irishman Paul.  We anchored off the town and had lunch, Paul’s family came down to wave to us from the shore.

We arrived at Carlingford Lough and navigated very carefully up the Lough towards our planned overnight stay in Carlingford Marina.  We had phoned earlier and been assured of two things.  They had plenty of room for visitors and there was enough clearance at low tide for Wind Singer’s 2 metre drought.

On arrival at approximately 7.45 pm it became clear that whoever had answered our call didn’t know what they were talking about.  It was a very tight marina with little room and no free visitors berths available and not very deep.  We tried to get to a couple of pontoons but in each case we ran aground, fortunately into very soft mud.  We had arrived on a rising tide so after about 15 minutes we floated off the mud and made our way back out into the Lough. 

There was also no room in our back up marina Warren Point, so we ended up spending the night on anchor off the main channel at 20.30 pm a very long day 58 miles run. 

We were lucky had we arrived 30 minutes later than we did, we would not have ran aground in the marina and potentially we could have had really serious problems at low tide in the middle of the night.

Paul on the helm approaching Newcastle