Portnoo to Aranmore

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Depart portnoo at 10.30 and arrived aranmore 17.30 . we covered 15miles in 7 hrs...the day began almost too well in bright sunshine. we raced along at 6kknts towards the tip of Aranmore in a northern breeze.
From the southern tip of Aranmore to Tory is only 20 miles we decided to continue about 8 miles west so that when we tacked we could make tory.As we headed west the wind freshened to a good force 5 and the wind veered NE. this sank our hope of making tory. we decided to make for Aranmore instead. for hour after hour we beat into the NE wind b4 rounding the northern end of the island, picking up the transits and finding some visitor moorings sth of calf island. Sally had her hand on the tiller for 7 hrs non stop. we dropped an anchor near a vis mooring and managed to get it wrapped around it... which we (Pat) later sorted. we then discovered a bottle of wine which john hillis had left and we very happily opened it. thank you john. the winds were too fresh to go ashore, so we did three days washing up (where are you now john?) and sally cooked up a very tasty and very unhealthy concoction. The oil pressure alarm sounded during the day when the engine was on low revs and we realised we needed to top up on lube oil. so we are going ashore tomorrow to get ten ltrs of oil. we may be here tomorrow night.....

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