Timo was the one to finally end the frustration by announcing we were headed to Ireland to sail a different spot up on the North West coast of Donegal. The rationale behind the call was that if we headed to The Isle of Lewis, we would only score a couple of hours sailing by the time the ferry arrived mid-afternoon. Our Stena ferry to Ireland would allow a full day on the water plus the option to head to Lewis the following day where the biggest swell was due to hit on Friday and Saturday. After all, that tiny little detour over to Ireland didn’t look too bad at all on the map. With this extra leg of the journey thrown in we could possibly score the best of both worlds! So we headed west somewhere just before Manchester and travelled through the night out of England and across Wales towards the port at Holyhead. Jamie was assigned to be in charge of logistics to change the Cal Mac booking over to Lewis, with a sketchy plan now intact to catch another Stena Line crossing out of Ireland from Belfast to Cairnryan the following evening and then drive up to Ullapool overnight to catch the Thursday morning boat. All these plans seemed to make sense, but none of us had really sat down and looked at a map to actually work out how ridiculous this plan was, how much we were going to burn in fuel and how all this constant travel was going to grind us down. Our first Stena vessel was due to sail at 02.30 and we decided to stump-up £30 for a cabin, realizing that any sleep we could catch was imperative. Once in Ireland we had at least another eight hours-worth of driving ahead of us before our evening departure from Belfast over to Scotland! Around 6am we landed in Dublin and headed straight up to Timo’s parents house just outside Belfast for a quick weather check and to load up with breakfast. Windguru was calling for 30 knot winds and a 3.5m swell so Timo was confident that we were going to score a decent day on the water. Fuelled up on fresh bacon sarnies and with some slabs of Timo’s mum’s finest chocolate sponge on board, we headed towards the far limits of the Irish Coast, in good spirits considering our travel ordeal so far.
