We left Horta on 26th August finally bound for home – we’d been delayed nearly 2 weeks due to getting Covid and missing our weather slot. “Mid August” had turned into “nearly September” and it was starting to feel quite autumnal. We set off with grey sky and a lumpy sea on a close reach. We saw (usually just on the AIS) about one ship per day and we actually saw and spoke to (on VHF) one other yacht, a French guy sailing solo (apart from the cat) and heading for Brest. As expected, we had to use the engine on a couple of days to get through light wind high pressure areas. We had one day of nice downwind sailing. What we didn’t expect further on in the passage was to get persistent NE winds (coming from exactly where we wanted to go) instead of the expected prevailing westerlies. At one point we seemed to have a choice between heading towards Iceland or Brest! We realised there was no way we could make Cork and decided to aim for Bantry Bay instead. Hard on the wind in a big sea we were taking a bit of a battering, too much sail and the side deck would be under water, too little and we’d be stopped and every so often the boat would hit a wave head on and it would come crashing over the cabin top and down the ventilators and hatches. Luckily at least our off watch bunk was comfortable even under these conditions. Slowly we got closer to Ireland. 2 days out we started to see fishing boats and the VHF radio came to life with broadcasts from Irish Coast stations. We had seen hardly any wildlife, just Shearwaters seemed to be there most of the way. On our 2nd to last day a tiny bird flew into the cockpit and stayed a short while perching under the spray hood. It didn’t seem too impressed with our offerings of breakfast cereal, but wasn’t at all frightened of me. Apparently it was a Willow Warbler (thanks Jayne). As we closed the coast we started to see Fulmars, then gulleimots and gannets, and dolphins. Finally after 11 days and 2 hours we were able to sail up Bantry Bay to Bere island and the little marina at Lawrence Cove. A lovely calm and peaceful place and the sun came out! N.B. The phone came to life as we sailed up Bantry Bay – 474 unread emails!

I recorded daily sea and air temperature. The sea went from 20.7 to 15.5 degrees C though it was 26.9 later in harbour. The air went from 21 to 14 degrees C though this rather depended on whether the sun was out. Steve toughed it out wearing shorts and sandals the whole way – underneath full waterproofs and he had switched to a long sleeve thermal. Anita caved in and got out long trousers, socks and boots for the first time since Spain. We travelled 992 nm through the water by the log (but this under reads). The distance according to the route plan was 1126.5 nm. The actual distance sailed was at least 1334.9 (adding up our track) due to tacking against the wind etc. The distance over the ground was more difficult to calculate than usual as the Chartplotter failed just before we left – it doesn’t boot up any more. Not enough time to fix it/ get a new one so we had to do without, using mobile Navionics on iPads for Navigation. Luckily our system is wired so that Log, echo sounder, wind instrument and autopilot work without the plotter. And luckily we have a totally independent transmitting AIS. What we didn’t have was the radar and the GPS feed to the radios so the VHF bleeped madly every few hours as it didn’t have a position. It was nice to be able to use Hydrovane wind pilot to steer instead of the electric autopilot – earlier in the trip it’s rudder was stowed in the cockpit locker to keep it as a spare in case of Orca attack. In fact going upwind with generally plenty of it the wind generator made us plenty of power. In the big seas at the end of the trip we used both autopilots.