NOTES ON SAILING ON THE ASGARD II

25 September 2007 – Cork to Kinsale

28 September 2007 – Kinsale to Castletownshend

29 September 2007- Castletownshend to Crookhaven

30 September 2007- Crookhaven to Bear Island

1 October 2007 - Bear Island to Dingle

2, 3, 4 October 2007 – Dingle to Galway

Sunday 23 September 2007

I flew from Tampa to Newark to Dublin to Cork. Left the house yesterday afternoon 3:30 pm local time. Got to my B&B; Lisadell House, Western Rd, Cork City, about noon today.  I spent the day walking around Cork city – city center, the tourist office, the city museum. Got back to my room around 4:45 pm, and took a nap. It’s almost 6 now. I’m going out to get some dinner, and hopefully listen to some live music.

Monday 24 September 2007

I took the walking tour “Monks and Vikings Cork” this morning. I was the only customer, so it was a private tour. Very interesting. After that, I took the bus to Midleton and toured the distillery where they make Jameson, Paddy, and Power Whiskey. Also very interesting, and the tastes at the end were great.

Tuesday 25 September 2007

This morning I walked up to the old Gaol, to the Shandon Church, the butter museum (yeah, butter museum. Butter is big in Ireland. Always has been. Tain Bo Coolaigne, the national epic, is about a cattle raid.) Then I checked out the Cork Vision Centre. I thought it was an eye care center, but it’s a museum. Then the Crawford Gallery, an art museum. After all that, I took a bus to Blarney and toured the castle and the grounds. It’s touristy, but beautiful. The castle isn’t restored, like Bunratty Castle is, but it has a great “castle ruins” vibe. The castle itself is crowded with American tourists, but you could spend an entire day walking the trails. They are beautiful and not at all crowded.

Friday 28 September 2007

I joined the Asgard at Customs house Quay in Cork at 2 pm on Wednesday. We did our orientation, safety drills, up and over (I was stationed at the top of the mast to help anyone who needed help). We had a dinner that couldn’t be beat, stowed our gear, cleaned up, went for a pint at Charlie’s Bar and heard some live Bluegrass music.

Thursday we sailed from Cork to Kinsale. Arnie McDonnell and Liam Quinn from last year’s trip are sailing again and Stephen Kerr from the year before. Kevin O’Leary, the cook, is back, and Rowan McSweeney, who served as mate last year, is Captain on this trip.

Kinsale was beautiful, as always, and we went to a beautiful old pub called the Spaniard after I got off watch at 10:00 pm. I first encountered the Spaniard twenty five years ago. I was hitch hiking around Ireland on Spring Break in college. It was March and I had been standing in the cold rain for hours trying to get a ride. There was a fire in the fireplace, and I had my first hot whiskey. There was a guy there, a patron, not a paid performer, and he was playing “Down by the River” by Neil Young, and it was smoking. Strange the things you remember over the years. Last night there was a guitarist and singer playing Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, the Eagles… He was very good, too.

Today we’re sailing from Kinsale to Castletownshend. (I had a shower in Kinsale this morning.)

Saturday 29 September 2007

Castletownshend was a nice little town, but the harbor, Castlehaven, was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and that’s including Ballycastle. There are hills coming down to the water’s edge from all directions, and a lot of them end in cliffs. And when you get into the harbor, Skiddy Island and Horse Island screen out the ocean and it’s totally protected on all sides and it looks like a mountain lake. The light of the setting sun on the cliff walls was soft and pink at first, and brighter orange later, and it hadn’t died yet when a full moon rose over the cliffs, ducking into and coming out from behind dark clouds and sending a bright silver blue light over the rocks and the water.

We anchored in the harbor and Nealy, the mate, ferried those of us who wanted to go ashore in the RIB, dodging moored boats and mooring balls at great speed, and dropped us at the foot of the only street in town. Fearghal and Ciaran went to see the church, with stained glass by Harry Clarke, but of course it was closed and dark. I had seen a display of Harry Clarke’s work at the Crawford Gallery in Cork. It was very good. Reminded me of Aubrey Beardsley. He illustrated the works of Edgar Allen Poe, which was appropriate.

This morning we set out from Castlehaven. We had a whale come up just on the port side of the ship. I got a good look at it, but I don’t know what kind of whale it was. It had a smooth black and a relatively small dorsal fin and it looked to be about thirty feet long. We had three or four dolphins playing about the bow a little later.

We just sailed past the south side of Cape Clear Island, and we’re rounding Fastnet Rock as I write this. As a matter of fact, I’m going to put down this book, get my camera, and take a picture of it. (The 1979 Fastnet race was the greatest yacht racing disaster in history until the 2004 Sydney-Hobart race.)

Later same day: We sailed into Crookhaven harbor, anchored, and went swimming. We climbed the rigging and swung on a rope over the water, letting go just before the rope started swinging back towards the ship. It was just like being in a pirate movie.

Sunday 30 September 2007

Crookhaven was very scenic. Arnie and Liam and I took a walk ashore. (Nealy took us over in the RIB) It’s a spit of land with the Atlantic on one side, with Fastnet light flashing, and Crookhaven harbor on the other. The terrain is very rocky and mountainous. There is a copper mine, and the side of the mountain is all dug and cut away like a quarry. Later, in the pub, I saw a chart of the harbor, showing the town and environs, made in 1848. It doesn’t seem to have changed very much since then.

We’re on our way to Castletownbere, or actually, Bear Island, today. The wind is out of the east at force 6 (30? mph). There’s a good big swell, and the decks have gone awash for the first time on this trip. We’re just rounding Brow Head now.  Then we’ll round Mizen Head – the south west corner of Ireland – and Three Castle Head. After that, we’ll be sailing north along the west coast of Ireland. Up until now, we’ve been sailing west along the south coast of Ireland.

Monday 1 October 2007

We had dolphins yesterday afternoon. Lots and lots of dolphins, and they played around the ship for a good long time. They took to swimming very fast and jumping completely out of the water. There would be as many as four or five in the air at a time, looking like a bunch of flying fish.

When we got to Bear Island, we were given some free time to go watch Ireland play in the Rugby world cup. Damien and Michael and I went exploring the island. It’s a great wild place, just mountains and cliffs and rocky coastline with waves crashing up against it.

There are three peaks on the island, and Martello towers on the tops of two of them – 209 meters and 271 meters. The Martellos are lookout towers built during the Napoleonic wars to watch the seas for invasion fleets. We walked up to the towers through bog and gorse and nettle, and climbed up the old spiral staircases to the battlements. The views were breathtaking. Bear Island is in Bantry Bay.

This morning we sailed around the Bere peninsula, between the Bull, the Cow, and the Calf and Dursey Head. These are three huge rocks towering out of the sea, taller than they are wide. There’s a lighthouse on the Bull, 250’ above the sea. You’d have to see it.

We’ve had more dolphins today, on two different occasions, with a bit of jumping, too, but not quite like the show yesterday. Now the sun has come out, we have most of the sails out, with a fresh wind behind us, and we’re just coming up on the Skelligs. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Later that day:

The Skelligs were spectacular. Skellig Michael rises about 1,000’ out of the Atlantic. Early Christian monks built a monastery on it, to be completely isolated from the world. The monks built beehive shaped cells to live in, just all enough to stand in, and wide enough to lie down. They had no windows or fireplace and were built without mortar; just stones placed one atop another. Fifteen hundred years later, they are still water tight. The other Skellig, Skellig Beag (Little Skellig) has Europe’s largest colony of Gannets. It’s nearly as big as Skellig Michael, all craggy mountain and cliff, but it’s all white with Gannett droppings. We had more dolphin visitors.

We could see Great Blasket Island off the port bow when we veered east into Dingle Bay. As we approached Dingle Harbor Fungie, the famous Dingle Dolphin, came out to escort us into the harbor. He surfaced right alongside, maybe thirty or forty times, the whole time we were in the channel. When we got to a certain marker, he turned around and headed out to greet the next boat coming in. He’s been escorting every ship and boat into and out of Dingle Harbor for the past ten or fifteen years, and he’s now the most famous resident of Dingle.

After dinner we went to Dick Mack’s Bar and General Store, where Darragh sang traditional songs. There were some American women on holiday, and they couldn’t get enough.

Tuesday 2 October 2007

We had most of the day as free time ashore in Dingle. I bought my dirty clothes to a launderette and explored the town on foot. The old chapel of the Presentation Sisters Convent has been converted to a sort of a museum – the Diseart Arts Center. They have twelve Henry Clarke stained glass windows, commissioned in 1922 and installed in 1924, and they are glorious. There were a lot of craft and jewelry and woolen shops in town, and I did a little souvenir shopping, but I was told that the selection and prices are better in Galway.

Majella and Karen, Stephen, Frank, and myself stopped at Johnny Fox Hardware Store and Bar for a quick pint before heading back to the ship. After dinner we put to sea in a nasty rain. The rain didn’t stop Fungie the Dingle Dolphin from coming out to see us off. After we had all the sails set the middle watch (my watch) went below to get some sleep. We have to be up for the midnight to 4:00 a.m. watch.

Wednesday 3 October 2007

It had stopped raining when we started our watch at midnight. The wind was out of the south-southwest, and we were running before it at a heading of 0 degrees – due north – with the square sails braced to starboard. There was little shipping traffic. There was phosphorescence in the water, glowing white in baseball size clumps. About ten minutes to three it started raining again. I got my rain jacket on in time, but not the pants, and my legs got soaked. I was very glad to be relieved at four o’clock.

I slept until 7:30, had breakfast, and went back to sleep until 9:30. That felt luxurious. When I got up on deck the rain and the clouds were gone. We had brilliant warm sunshine and twenty knots of wind off the aft quarter, and we were fairly flying. We had the course and the topsail, the jib, the foretopmast staysail, the main staysail and the mainsail out. The seas were rolling, about twelve feet, and we had dozens of dolphins playing in the bow wake and surfing the waves. There was a whale off the port beam, but we could only see the spout when he came up for air. I stayed on deck, just watching the dolphins, until eleven o’clock. The bowsprit net is about six feet above the water, and makes a great perch for watching the dolphins.

At eleven am I reported for galley duty. I was on that until 2:30, and then on watch from 2:30 to 4:00. I spent a lot of that on the helm, which was a pleasure with the wind so strong and us running before it, and the swells coming up behind us and us surfing down them. When I came off the helm, we tacked and braced the square sails. We were relieved at 4:00 and now I have a free hour before reporting back for galley duty.

We reached Inish Mor, one of the Aran Islands, in early evening, sailed past all the Aran Islands, and saw the Cliffs of Moher just at dusk. And we spent the night tacking up and down the length of Galway Bay.

Thursday 4 October 2007

We were still tacking back and forth on Galway Bay this morning. We’ll be docking at a quay with a lock, and we have to wait until Celtic Explorer – a survey ship – leaves the dock, and there’s only enough water for her to get in and out for two hours before and two hours after high tide. There is great sunshine and wind today.

Epilogue – Saturday 6 October 2007

I had a B&B booked in Galway for Friday night and Saturday night. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We docked about noon on Thursday, put a “harbor stow” on all the sails, polished all the brass, scrubbed the decks and the crew quarters and the toilets, had another meal that couldn’t be beat (cod – the lightest sweetest flakiest cod you could imagine) and were released on poor, unsuspecting Galway town. I won’t go into details about a certain individual wearing big rubber Wellington boots to the pubs and taking one off at one point and throwing it across the bar. But I guess what we lacked in restraint, we made up in exuberance.

The docks where we tied up are right downtown. There are no gates or security of any kind. As the pubs were closing and lots of people in various stages of inebriation walking along the quay, a ship like the Asgard was what I think is called an attractive nuisance. If we didn’t have a watch posted, we could have unwelcome visitors. Some drunks did climb aboard the trawler tied up next to us at about three in the morning, on Arnie’s watch.

Now I’m not ahead of myself. On Friday morning Captain McSweeney asked me if I’d like to stay on Friday night and help Arnie with the harbor watch. Arnie is doing the next trip, from Galway back to Cork, and the other trainees don’t arrive until Saturday. We split the watch into two hour shifts. I took eight to ten, Arnie ten to twelve, me twelve to two a.m., and Arnie two to four in the morning. So I got out from ten until midnight. I called my daughter Audrey for her birthday, and had a drink with the Captain, Tom the Bosun, Steve the engineer, Kevin the cook, and Kevin’s friend Celine.

On the midnight to two watch the Galway Fisher (which is actually a tanker and not a fishing boat) left port. The ship took up practically the whole harbor. The deep water harbor is very small, and it has a flood gate, which is kept closed except for two hours before and after high tide. Otherwise there would be no deep water. This giant ship maneuvering in that tiny space was something to see. They backed up along the quay wall until they were no more than a few feet, it seemed like inches, from some sailboats that were tied up along the western wall. Then they cut a hard right turn, missing the Celtic Explorer by inches, and steamed out the open gate. It was like watching an eighteen wheeler parallel park on a crowded city street.

The Celtic Explorer departed and another tanker, if anything bigger than the Galway Fisher, arrived before my watch ended. I woke Arnie at about 2:30. The group I’d gone for a drink with returned about three. I had Friday dinner and Saturday with the ships officers, which was nice.

After that I went exploring. Galway is maybe the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. I had seen the medieval heart of the city on Thursday and Friday; twisty, narrow, cobbled streets, mostly closed to motor traffic, filled with pubs and gift shops, restaurants, jewelers, and street performers. What looks like a large section of the medieval city wall, with towers, has been incorporated into a mall called Eyre Square. I’m not sure that I like that, but apparently they didn’t need my permission. So on Saturday I went west along the waterfront to the Spanish Arch – Circa 1589 – (I wonder if there’s any connection with the Spanish Armada of 1588), and from there to the Galway Museum. I was in no rush, so I looked at every exhibit and read almost every plaque. After that, I walked up the river, flanked by canals on either side, with wooden locks, long disused, still in place and rotting gracefully.

That brought me to the National University of Ireland, Galway. The original buildings date from the 1840s, when a young Queen Victoria set it up as Queens College. The river was wider here, and the crew rowing club was out in their long narrow shells.

I crossed the river and checked out the Cathedral. It only dates from the 1950s, but it is a massive, imposing building. The sun was shining brightly, and the stained glass windows were vibrant. I was in no rush, so I stood back and looked at each and every one. They were just gorgeous. Then I walked back down the east side of the river back to the Spanish Arch, where it empties into Galway Bay. There’s a big park there and hundreds of people were out enjoying the warm sunshine on a perfect October afternoon. I got an apple and a bottle of cider and sat on the stone bank of the canal. There were hundreds of seagulls and dozens of swans swimming on the river. Groups of gulls would take to the air, achingly white like a bright white cloud, and settle back on the water a short distance away. I was back on the west side of the river now, my shoulders just slightly warm in the sunshine and my chest just slightly cool in the shade and just a hint of a nip in the air and the sky so azure and the sun shining so brilliantly on the old buildings on the other side and sparkling on the water and the gulls and swans whiter than any other gulls and swans have ever been and all the groups of people talking and laughing and moving slowly if at all, nobody in a hurry to go anywhere and why would they want to and the grass so green and I know there’s no way to describe it but just being there being part of it made me so happy that I don’t know if anyone’s ever been happier and if so not by much.