Friday 8 June (Dun Laoghaire to Ardglass)

Left at 1900 and crossed the Traffic Separation Scheme of Dublin Bay, with several FBSs around, and hoisted the mainsail off the Ben of Howth, and continued to motorsail north. By 1400 we were out of sight of land, ans spent our day identifying Shearwaters (both Manx and Great), gannets and shags. Lobster pot markers were fairly frequent, and we alternated pot watches and reading/snoozing through the long 12 hour passage. It was after 2000 when we made the interesting entrance to Ardglass, another small marina tucked into a commercial fishing harbour. Freddy, the HM, came down and greeted us, and we were suddenly in the midst of a hubbub of noisy arriving anglers and a birthday party on a neighbouring boat. As I was taking pictures of the pretty marina, a seal snorted its way to the surface and came to investigate Vega, and Cath got a good view of him/her over our transom before he/she dived smoothly below and was gone. We walked through the tiny village and found Arno's, a quite smart and obviously very popular restaurant run by a third generation of local owners, and had a lovely meal of sea bass. Local knowledge (Freddy again) suggested leaving at high tide tomorrow, so we retired early after coffee in the cockpit in the balmy night air.