What a Summer! Since setting off from Guernsey on 14 May we have completed a circumnavigation of Ireland and enjoyed the delights of the Western Isles of Scotland. It has been a mixed bag of weather from glorious sunshine to 100m visibility in fog. Great fun, but with so many ports and anchorages visited there has barely been a minute spare to keep the blog up to date. In the middle of August we returned to Kinsale to get Blue Velvet ready to head south towards Madeira and the Canary Islands; the same passage we attempted last year but aborted and diverted to Brest because of leaking windows and hatches.
However, after getting the laundry done, refuelling and restocking the food stores, our weather checks showed that Hurricane Erin was really messing up our planned passage towards Madeira which we had hoped would start on 19 August. So instead, since then, we have done a bit more cruising in southern Ireland whilst it became clearer where Hurricane Erin will track. We are now back in Kinsale waiting for a new alternator to be delivered and then will stock up the fridge again and try to find a suitable gap between the succession of gales in which to set off south.
