I thought that it would be a fine thing to show you a picture of Hawthorn on her new temporary mooring in the Grand Canal Basin, Ringsend.  Secure, quiet and an easy walk from the city centre, we have had a very pleasant couple of days since arriving here on Friday. Oh, I may have forgotten to mention that Ringsend is in Dublin and, once you know what we went through getting here you might understand why we are so fond of this spot.

We left Tarleton at two o clock on Thursday afternoon having spent the morning checking weather sites and assembling crew: the pilot, Sid, had arrived the day before, Paul Lorenz lives locally so came in time for lunch, and we were going to lay up against the home of our last crew member, Don, while waiting for the lock down to the tidal River Douglas; he just stepped on at the last minute.  It was with considerable apprehension that we waited for the tide to float us high enough to clear the cill on the lock  (we seem to remember that friends had come to see us off and apologise if we were less than chatty).  Of course, we were nervous: we had been told on many occasions that the Irish Sea is a frightening place but, having spent the last few days preparing Hawthorn for serious boating we knew the time to go had come. It was a feeling not unlike that a child has when they have climbed to the top diving board - you just have to jump in.  The difference being that, having jumped, a child is only in the water for a few seconds; not twenty four hours!

Where we were not so wise was in assuming that the sea would have calmed down from the blow that it took the day before. The Ribble estuary was not too bad and good time was made down to the 'hole in the wall' and the channel out to the Irish Sea beyond the sand banks.  Not that we could see any sand as we were virtually on top of a 30 foot tide.   We started to roll and pitch a bit at this point, far more than was comfortable but we thought that this was going to be as bad as it was going to get as we would soon be in deeper water and turning into the Westerly breeze that was putting the white horses up. All boats prefer to run straight into the weather and there are few that take a beam sea as badly as a 'flat bottomed punt' , as our pilot described Hawthorn. Our prep had been thorough but we were glad of the battery drill, bits of wood, screws and elastic rope that we dug out of the workshop in order to stop doors and drawers flying open and slamming shut constantly.  We were also concerned by the smell of burning oil and Paul and I spent some minutes working out that this was being caused by hydraulic oil spilling out of the breather cap on the reservoir when the boat was really rolling. It would not have mattered had the boat builder not put the exhaust under it.  With wind over tide we had quite a swell on the bow by now with each wave being announced by a huge bang as Hawthorn's flat base plate dropped back into the sea.  It was hard, stressful going but the weather was meant to improve so the sea could only get better.



I cannot really write too much about the rest of the voyage: we simply carried on in much the same seas for the twenty hours - twenty hours in which we barely ate or drank, certainly nobody slept. We just ploughed on for hour after hour,  the few boats that we did see were close to Holyhead in the dark - from a little boat low in the water they looked like giant casinos of light as they came up behind us and disappeared over the horizon for Dublin.  I steered for less than an hour on the whole trip preferring to skulk below and listen to the boats groaning complaints about our heavy treatment.  To be honest, four people in our wheelhouse is fun for a few hours on a sunny day, but it all gets a bit cramped and tense with five in it for twenty four. Jill found that she felt better for steering, and Don and Paul were made for standing at the wheel, you know that they will just keep doing it for hours they love it that much. The creaking and banging in the saloon and round the bathroom bulkheads was enough to keep me occupied,  although just what I was going to do if it all started to fall apart I have no idea.  Ironically, for all my attention,  it was Don who spotted that the floor was running with water, water that was coming out of the toilet!  Somehow the solenoid valve had jammed open and the pump was quite merrily emptying the remaining couple of hundred gallons of fresh water left in the bow tank over the toilet bowl rim. A few frantic minutes later we had isolated the water pump and controlled the flooding.  In planning Hawthorn's preparations for going to sea, I thought that we had covered every possibility for water ingress, it just proves that you cannot think of everything! The good news is that the sea state and rolling were forgotten for several minutes. And finally we had Dublin in sight. The GPSs had been counting down the time and distance to the waypoint just outside Dublin Harbour but it seemed to be taking an eternity to get there.  And the sea was getting worse: the last two hours into port were spent in the worst sea of the whole trip - so much for the improving forecast that we had gambled on.  We were now at the limit of the shell's design and would have been beyond it but for the fact that we had added bilge keels just for this very event: a force 5 beam sea. Exhausted we lusted for the calm water inside the harbour wall as we made our torturous crawl across the bay towards it.  Finally, with genuine relief, we were inside the breakwater; we had made it!

 It was a couple of hours before we were able to get a pint of Guinness. Not for us some trendy Temple bar, we just dived into the first little boozer that we saw (we did walk past some grander establishments), and ordered four and a half pints of the The Black Stuff. I paid: it seemed the least I could do as a thank you to a crew that had coped so much better with the conditions than I had - we would have been in real trouble without them.  Of course, I was fully occupied with concerns about the ship's health. After all the problems that we have suffered with Hawthorn I was hugely relieved that we had finally got the boat that we thought that we had paid for and we now know the limits of our little craft's seamanship (not that we ever intend to go there again!!!!!).  Not one item was broken in the crossing, nor did any furniture come loose or bulkheads slip, or books fall to the floor. More importantly, it seems that we now have an engine that should do what is asked of it: 22 hours of constant running at 1200 rpm without any worries about being able to bake bread in the engine room! So a thank you to Don, Paul and Sid for getting us here, and ( this may surprise many) to Pickwell and Arnold for building such a fine and strong shell.  Now where is that map of the Irish Waterways System?

 Two tired animals! How tired? Well just look what Don is lying in - if you knew Don.........