The sea state outside the harbour was quite wavy. There was a good little wind on the quarter of cervisia. Would be a really good wind for getting to the Dublin area. For the first 3 hours we did have great and fast sailing. There were lovely views of the Mourne mountains to the west. I remembered doing two Mourne mountain marathons there. Happy days. I would like to go back some time.
After the wind died, it was another case of engine on, engine off most of the way to Dun Laoghaire. The wind kept shifting direction quite rapidly. At one stage we would be going exactly where we wanted to go, then it would push us towards land until we could tack and then we would be heading in exactly the right direction again. It was weird.
We closed land again at a place called Lambay Island which is about 10 miles north of Dublin Bay. There were loads of seabirds around there, flying together. They may have been Manx shearwater. An interesting bird I saw earlier was something like a mini frigate bird. It would chase gulls (or some other white gull-like bird) until the white bird dropped whatever it had caught. The frigate bird would then catch the regurgitated fish in mid air, then harry the gull some more for good measure. It was very interesting behaviour, especially given that I'd seen real frigate birds in Barbuda, but never worked out how they actually managed to get another bird to drop its food. By the terrified squawking sounds coming from the white bird, it looked like sheer persistence and tiring the opposition out worked.
It got dark near Howth and then we had Dublin Bay to cross in the dark. Given how fickle the wind had been, I decided to just motor across the bay. We could have tacked, but it would have taken some time and that didn't seem to be necessary at the time of night. We got moored up in the Marina at midnight and then I went to bed. It had been a long day.
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