6/29/13

3:00 Eastern Time

We are currently at: 18:35 UTC

54º 44 N

05º 25 W

We sailed out of Cork harbor with a newly repaired "Big Blue" sail with Grandma (Judy), Grandpa (Bob Sr.), Bob, Kim, Anna, and Finn (AKA SuperMan) on Thursday evening about 15:30 UTC.  Small pilot type whales greeted us as we left the entrance to Cork Harbor.  We sailed East along the southern Irish Coast and then North through the Irish Sea.  We hope to be at our first canal or at a safe anchorage in Scotland by tomorrow evening.  We can, in fact, see Scotland through the mists as well as on our radar.

Most of the sailing has been fine (lake type sailing).  Last night we were hit by a cold front which made for extremely uncomfortable conditions.  We were off the coast of Dublin in the Irish Sea which is shallow and there is a huge tide (3kts+).  This can make short steep waves very quickly...and it did!

Our first and only casualty from the conditions from the cold front was Grandma.  She became very disoriented and has been having vision problems.  We think this is sea sickness as these are symptoms that I (young Bob) have had in the past under similar situations.  We nearly went to port a couple times today but she seemed to be improving.  If she is not a lot better tomorrow we will need to get her to a Dr.  That situation put a real damper on the mood today.

We can see lots of large dairy farms along with some impressive castles along the parts of the coast that we are close enough to see.  There is a tremendous amount of ship traffic all day and night which makes for active watches.  We are all really looking forward to getting to the canals and smaller places where we can stop and rest at night.  There is a gale blowing just to our West so we need to keep the pressure on.