Day 22- Thursaday 9th Republic to Northern Ireland

Cycled off to get some more petrol. There is a real coldness in the wind. This is no blazing June yet. The club office was not open until 10.00, but I wanted to get off. I needed to post the swipe key through the letter box, which meant to get back onto the pontoon i had to swing along by hand over hand on a bar on the underside of the gangway. As the gangway dropped back down to the the pontoon the gap between the underside and the water decreased so that my bum was in the water before I could get onto it. That was an interesting start to the day. Wedging the security gate open would have been a better move!

Near the pontoon, was a pair of birds fighting. they looked like coots, but then one of them dived and there was flash of red leg. They were black Guillemots. they are a lot smaller than the ones we get in England and I've been seeing all over the place These are confinedbreeding on the west coast of Scotland and Ireland.

It was hard leaving Dublin. there was so much more to see and do. i should have liked to see the galleries,and The Book of Kells. However, the forecast is for a wet and blowy weekend, so if I don't make the most of the weather window over the next couple of daysI shall be here for quite a while.

On the way to the harbour entrance there was a disused jetty, which seemed to have a tern colony on it. As I drew close they all took off and the sky was full of these beautiful acrobatic birds.

The entrance to the harbour is marked by a couple of small light houses. I expect they were manned once but now they look derelict. There is a large bell, which must have been rung by the keeper. Was this in fog or for some other pupose?

The Westerly wind was blowing me out of the harbour and as I turned north past The Ben of Louth it provided a good broad reach up past the i;land of Lambay and into the Skerries.

The sky was full of showers and in the squalls the wind freshened. It then turned into the North West, which meant I had to drop the jib and motor sail.As i crossed  Dundalk bay the Mountains of Lourne. I had been intending to go into Carlingford Lough, but a harbour called Kilkeel seemed interesting. The Lough marks the boundary between the Republic and North Ireland. This meant that I would cease "roaming" and would reconnect with Orange/T Mobile. I would now be able to receive Internet on my phone and laptop without being so reliant on wifi places. I was sorry to be leaving Southern ireland though. Apart from seeing more of Dublin, Malahide,Howth and Drogeda all looked worth a visit.

Kilkeel has Northern Ireland's largest fishing fleet, but it is a very small and compact harbour. A seal was moving around inside and though it was nice to see it I thought the slight sheen of diesel on the surface wouldn't do it much good.The wildlife around here is obviously used to there being a lot of fish about. There was even a heron on a fishing boat.