Dublin

Yesterday we readied the boat for the next leg. Motor and battery check, filled up diesel, cleaned deck. Checked wiring motor panel and put extra chaff protection on the genua. Hartendief is still in top shape!
We had a great lunch with my Harvard AMP mate Enda Connellan, the CEO of the Dublin Harbour/Port company. Enda is also a serious sailor and very entertaining. He toured his empire with us: miles of docks, ferry, container and roro terminals. Impressive stuf.
Dublin has grown tremendeously over the last 15 years and has some very sleek and modern KNSM-Island like developments. After lunch we came back to the boat to finish our maintenance work and at night we enjoyed Dun Laoghaire, wich is a young, modern affluent bayside satelite town of Dublin - again with lots of new modern sleek bayside developments. The RIYC stands here overlooking a big, ultra modern marina (fingerprint access control!). The RIYC is just one of 4 yacht clubs here and there is a tremendeous racing fleet that dwarfs anything we have in the Netherlands. We had dinner at the club on Thursday, which turned out to be the last race day of the season and the place was full with nice enthusiastic racing crowd. One of the owners of "Attitude" explained how we should be able to make even Hartendief plane under spinnaker by dropping it off a wave; "If you haven't got green water up to the mast you haven't tried hard enough". We will try that some time.... :)

Joost and Charles just got on the 'Patton Flyer' bus to the airport. We had a great time guys!

Dun Laoghaire is in full preparation for its international cultural festival starting tonight, but crew 4 with Pieter, Rene and Matthew will be on the plane by now and the plan is to leave this afternoon to catch the south going tide to Waterford (100M). There is a slight chance that we will head for Falmouth in one go, but most likely is that we will overnight in Waterfort Sun-Mon to let a patch of strong S-winds pass and than set out for the 200M sail to England by mid afternoon on Monday. Winds look terrible after Wed morning, so if we do not escape before that time we will get stuck in (beautiful :)) Ireland. We won't take stupid risks though and 7bf backstay wind is the max we plan to encounter. Hopefully the weather forecasters are having a good week. The models have been flawless so far.