Having returned south on the Shannon to meet our very first Irish customers at Shannonbridge the shock of the real world of work was quite a moment. Our concern was to complete the work as well as we possibly could as, having spent some time on the water here, we were fully aware just how insular the Irish waterways are: an unhappy customer could prove fatal to our plans to live and work here. With the usual luck the job that we had taken on was far from straight forward and had needed a fair bit of thought and design prior to our starting work. Fortunately the customer was made up with the job (we only knew that they had seen it on receiving at text reading ‘Yippee!’) and we could breath again. A critical moment had passed successfully.

Our first happy customers

We had met the customers for the first time at the Shannonharbour rally in June. We had also met a number of their friends in the Heritage Boat Association (HBA). It turned out that a number of the HBA members were gathering on Lough Ree for a fortnight of cruising and we readily accepted an invitation to join them: their local knowledge, experience and  friendly attitude virtually guaranteed not just a good time but also a chance to learn more about the waters we now cruise. Oddly enough, the point that we met them was in ‘the secret mooring’, on Cooson Lough, it was not such a secret that we had not already found it. What we would never have found was the derelict remains of a wooden boat that lay in the woods beside the shore. We were soon informed of the structure and use of G boats - barges that were built during The Emergency (as the period of the Second World War is correctly called here) to deliver fuel into Dublin due to English and Welsh coal no longer being available for import. The G boats were cobbled together: a steel bow and stern with a wooden midsection and the scarcity of good hardwood meant that soft wood was used. All that is left of the G boats is the two steel sections on the shore at Cooson so we felt quite privileged to have seen the relic in such knowledgeable company as, in the unlikely event of our stumbling across it by accident, we would never have known what it was.  Foolishly, we did not take the camera, which is a shame.

HBA fleet in 'Secret Harbour'

We spent several very happy days amongst the HBA crowd. With a diverse mix of boats and crews there was always something going on: a cruise to, and a mass anchoring in, Safe Harbour with swimming in the bay (frightfully cold at first but I stayed in for twenty minutes - the Irish are much more sensible as many of them have wet suits!) and a tour of the ruins of Rindoon Castle on the shore. And a run up the Owenacharra River, where we were given a bank-side mooring to accommodate Hobbes. The plan had been to only stay for one night but a windy forecast meant that we stayed two. One of the interesting things about cruising with the Irish is the way that children are brought along and included ( we would not have seen many kids on a similar venture in England) and, despite our being in the middle of nowhere, cars were appropriated and the younger members of the expedition taken on mass to the cinema at Athlone for the latest Harry Potter. We stayed and put covers over some hatches on a converted M Barge - ex Irish working boats of which there are many in various states of conversion.  We even found ourselves starting to keep ‘Irish time’ of getting up mid morning and appropriately late nights. Once awake, Jill baked cakes and buns which endeared her to all. We even got used to our name on the VHF radio: ‘secret’ call signs were given to each boat in order to maintain some privacy. The meaning of which took some learning. We were ‘Minesweeper’, a suitable moniker following our riding over the rock on the River Suck some weeks previously ( we were grateful to hear that it had been located and removed) and it was in this role that we had arrived first at Safe Harbour. Having a new built barge with a solid base-plate rather singled us out for this role.

HBA fleet in 'Safe Harbour'

The HBA were going to be out for some time but we had other people to catch up with: Eric and Ted, whom we had got to know at Shannonharbour, were heading up north on their barges. A few phone calls and we had arranged to meet in the middle of Lough Ree, from where we work our way north to the Shannon - Erne Waterway. which would take us over  the Shannon’s watershed and across the border to Northern Ireland. Waving goodbye to the HBA, we slipped our mooring and readied ourselves for a few weeks of adventure with the ‘Misfit Mariners’.