With everyone other than myself and Eric away, the two of us decided that the only thing to do was to raise the mast, rig the sails and get out onto the lough. Hatches were opened, ropes found and, with Eric as the brains and me as the brawn, the mast was raised. So well is the mast counterbalanced that just Eric’s weight was enough to get it lifting while I hung onto the brake rope. Just raising the mast transformed the barge: it now looked balanced and purposeful rather than squat and compromised. Once locked upright by halyards fore and aft, we were able to lace the jib sail onto its halyard, and drop the traveller bar across the deck to secure the jib throat halyard. Eric’s attention then turned to the mainsail which required luff lacing to the mast, the gaff added and laced, and the toe securing to the traveller clew across the stern with the mainsheet. The deal was that I would be the brawn and Eric the brains but, with so many new words and terms, my head hurt more than my muscles. At least we were ready to sail.  While sitting admiring our achievement with a cup of tea, Eric told me how, when the boat was delivered from Holland, Ted and himself put the whole thing together using no more than a picture from the internet. Just re-mounting the mast involved manhandling over a ton of counterweights onto the base and sorting through miles of rope. Tea consumption on that day must have been considerable.

With the mast up and the sails ready to be raised, we motored out of the harbour to shore-side shouts of: “Sail it out!” (I say shore-side: there was a distinct absence of such shouts from the expensive cruisers assembled around us)  Initially sailing with just the jib we soon found that there was not enough wind to keep steerage, so I went forward and raised the mainsail. The canvas drew tight, we leaned a little, and water could be heard passing under the boat in a delightful gurgle. Finally we were really sailing. This has to be the perfect way of moving a boat about as you feel so much more in harmony with the environment. That there are very few sailing barges in Ireland meant that many boaters have never seen a barge under sail in the smaller loughs and we were photographed, hooted at, and waved to by every vessel that past. I even got to do a bit of sailing and the task of balancing the rudder while gauging the tension on the mainsheet and calculating where we were going to end up (in comparison to where I wanted us to be) was quite a challenge. Unfortunately, the challenge was made nigh on impossible when the wind dropped completely. In the land of no wind the engine is king so we stowed the sails and motored back to the harbour.  Going onto Hawthorn to put the kettle on, I was stunned to see the time: what we thought was a three hour sail was actually five and a half.  It was not a particularly challenging sail, but enough to offer a real taste of something special. Ted soon returned with Joelle and, with Jill back from England, the Misfit Mariners were restored to full strength and Eric’s barge was returned to the compromised, wing clipped, state required to pass under the electric cables and bridges upriver of Dromod.

The following day brought a mixed bag of emotions: There is always a sense of joy when getting underway again after a few days of static mooring but this time it felt different as we were all going to be on unvisited waters in a couple of days and we were excited when clouds of diesel smoke announced our departure from Dromod. The little fleet was broken at the first lock upstream as Ted and Eric went through the lock while, unable to get in with them, we followed on. Intent on catching up we were motoring hard from the top of the Jamestown Canal when, to our surprise,  we saw the other boats at rest against the rushes in one of the wide bays. Relief followed when we found that the pause was only for lunch. More excitement followed with our rescuing of a large hire cruiser which was hard aground on the riverbank.  Noticing that it was crewed by young Japanese women, Eric thought one of his fantasies was about to be realised but Hawthorn, with its torquey engine and large prop was the obvious choice to attempt to drag them free. To cheers of relief from the hirers, and groans of dismay from Eric, we just managed it. Then it was on into Carrick on Shannon and the disappointment of finding that there were very few moorings available. Ted’s slightly smaller vessel got in on the jetties while we took the only spot available on the town quay. Eric tied alongside us.

More disappointment followed when, after a short walk round town, it became obvious that we were not going to be able to use the internet from the boat once we got a little further north: there is a black hole for coverage on our provider and all the other mobile phone companies required a contract, proof of address and residency in the Republic. That night, concerned by Carrick’s reputation as a spot where boats can be messed with at night, I sat up reading in the wheelhouse until One O Clock. I had been in bed for less than five minutes when boots could be heard jumping on the cabin roof. To my surprise the drunken fools involved ran off to a hire boat when I appeared in the wheelhouse. A poor night’s sleep followed. Our gut instinct not to moor on the wall was proven correct but to find the idiots were boaters was not anticipated. The following morning, after surveying the remains of kebab strewn on our roof (conclusive proof of drunkenness), I had to beg Eric and Ted, whose first response was vengeance, not to go and sort the lads out. It was a minor incident - we have known far worse in England - but one that made Jill and I aware that we were now members of a new tribe: clearly from here on in, it was ‘One for all and all for one’. Apologies for the long delay in posting. We are on Lough Erne and have arrived sometime before modern communications - even the phones are struggling to connect so the internet is a no go for the present. I will post again when able to get back into Enniskillen Library.