Peel is beautiful. We spent the evening walking up to a monument on a hill above the town which had impressive views over the island, and across the Irish Sea we could see the Mourne Mountains in Ireland. We stayed up on the hill to watch the sunset, quite an impressive sight seeing the sun setting over Ireland.
On Tuesday we had to wait in the marina until the afternoon for the tide to come in. This gave us a chance to catch up with a couple maintenance issues while the crew went and explored the town. It has been really good to have John with us, who works for SYS. He has really helped us this week, again just taking the pressure off Karen and I with some jobs that needed doing (and not pleasant either) – valuable bonding time for Karen and her husband!
We also got ourselves prepped and ready for our sail over to Liverpool, with more fuel for the boat, and more fuel for the crew. Once we could get out of the marina we set sail for Port St Mary, passing south of Calf on Man and completing our circumnavigation of the Isle. We had a pretty good sail with good winds from the south giving us a beat down the west coast. With an early morning ahead of us it was an early night out on a mooring in Port St Mary.
Impressively, everyone was up with us at 3am to set sail for Liverpool, but with not very much wind from directly behind us, and a rather tight time schedule to stick to, we ended up motoring for most of the early morning. Gerard, Marie-Clare and I took the first early morning watch and got to appreciate the sunrise. I really do love being out on the water in the early hours, and watching the slow brightening of the sky and the pastel colours changing in the clouds is so peaceful (even with the engine on). By 10am the wind had come back to the SW, giving us a beautiful beam reach across the Irish Sea for the rest of the day, and with a bit of sun coming out (and a couple of us braving shorts for the first time in quite a while) it was pretty much perfect sailing conditions.
Skandia were waiting for us in Liverpool with another welcoming reception. This was was really good, with a load of people standing on the wall waving us in as we came up and parked next to them. The food, as always, was really good.
Iain Percy (Skandia Team GBR) was around to meet us as well. The crew were all very impressed with his two gold medals, and he was brilliant at getting them all involved in the sailing dinghy simulator competition going on, which Nial managed to win!
It has been such a fantastic craic having this crew on board. I can almost understand Irish, and the laughter hasn’t stopped all week. A great welcome into Liverpool, and with Jo, Tracy and Frank coming to join us this evening, I am really looking forward to exploring the cultural capital of Europe.
Sadly, we say goodbye to our crackin’ Irish crew – you have been fantastic- such a great craic!
Cheers,
Cath
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