Goodbye Dun Laoghaire

At 5am on Sunday, the last day of September, we shoved off the Dun Laoghaire docks and watched the lights of Dublin Harbour fade into the distance. We battled tides and moderate seas to make our way south. It was cold and gray but we had good wind (15-20kts) for most of the day and somehow managed to dodge most of the rain. Upon approach to Dunmore East we decided to stop for the night. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Why continue on when we could stop for a family visit (it’s my captain’s brother’s stomping grounds), savor a pint of goodness AND get a good night sleep? Wrong. Well, the visit and the Guinness were great but the swells and never-ending motion in the harbour resulted in it making our top-10-worst-nights-on-the-boat list. Exhausted, we lifted the hook in the early morning hours and continued south.