Kinsale County Cork Republic of Ireland

After a lovely day anchored off Charles’ Fort, we decided to move further into the harbour and pick up one of the visitors moorings. There were a couple of reasons for that; we had invited Rhys and Niamh plus Gavin, from the Rustler 44 Saorsa, aboard Blue Velvet for a drink that evening and, as they were all heading back to the moorings off Castletown marina, plus they were talking about westerlies coming in, it made sense that we too moved to the mooring buoys.

Passing the very picturesque Summer Cove on our way upriver

A little further in some of the houses on Scilly Walk and High Road

Looking back at the main quay and Kinsale Marina with the town beyond

Blue Velvet on one of the visitors mooring buoys by Viking Wharf

Gavin couldn’t join us but we had a lovely evening with Rhys and Niamh, hearing about their sailing adventures over the past 4 years, including their trip back via Greenland, and also about their plans for the future. That included their soon-to-be-completed house purchase. With moving in and squeezing in a summer cruise they are going to have a busy year. As you can imagine, with the conversation flowing, the evening ended far too quickly!

The very colourful Stone Mad jewellery shop

The next day (Tuesday 20 May) we went ashore for a wander and a shop and so can confirm that Kinsale is as lovely and as friendly as ever. Rhys had submitted a short paragraph about our meet-up to Simon Currin, the OCC’s social media rep, which Simon posted during the afternoon, with the sign-off sentence ‘and I see from FleetMap that another OCC yacht, Saro’s Gyda, is shortly to arrive in Kinsale’.  Fabulous! Saro’s Gyda is owned by Derrick and Ali Thorrington. Derrick is also one of the OCC’s Flag Officers and we’ve been trying, and failing, to meet up with Derrick and Ali at a number of places over the past few years. At last we would be in the same port together!  By the time we saw Simon’s post, Saro’s Gyda was anchored off a beach in the entrance to Kinsale, on the other side of the headland from us.  We hatched a plan for them to come for a drink aboard Blue Velvet and then for us all to go ashore to enjoy some traditional Irish music.

Derrick and Ali on Saro’s Gyda picked up the mooring buoy next to Blue Velvet

We had a delicious early meal of local mussels and then Derrick and Ali joined us, along with Rhys, and we all had a lovely time talking boaty stuff.

Guinness and live music in Kitty Ó Sé’s pub with Derrick and Ali

Ashore, we found the music at Harry’s Bar was disappointing and too amplified, though the Guinness was good. It turned out that Derrick and Ali are both musicians and enjoy playing Irish and Scottish folk music. So we went looking for some other live music venues and settled on Kitty Ó Sé’s pub. The band playing there was excellent with a lineup of iconic songs. We were only going to stay for one more pint, but the toes were tapping and the songs kept coming so the evening went on far longer than planned, but it was a very good evening.

During drinks on board Blue Velvet, Rhys and Ali had come up with a plan for an open water swim around the island at the head of Sandy Bay after work on Wednesday evening, so Derrick and Ali were committed to staying another night in Kinsale. We, however, were keen to make best use of some non-westerly quadrant winds to move west, so made plans to catch the midday tide.

Kinsale, County Cork, Republic of Ireland