Portrush to Ballycastle

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Day 27
Friday 15th July 2011.
Portrush to Ballycastle
Departed 0600 and arrived 0950.
We had a lovely passage under the Causeway cliffs and past Sheep island into Ballycastle……’at the ould Lamas fair boys were you ever there? Where you ever at the fair in Ballycastle O!’
We had no wind and so we motored with the tide this twenty mile hop. We tied on to a pontoon before the harbour master, John Morton, beckoned us in to the marina. We tied up and had chat with him. Then we both tried to catch up on sleep before having a look about the town. It has lots of hardware stores…..! Sally got a haircut, we had a few coffees, shower (again no charge) and then back to the boat. The forecast for the next few days was poor. We spent ages looking at the tides and the forecast. We had no internet access and we were not hearing any weather on the VHF. I called Daniel and he read out the Sea Area Forecast for the Lough Foyle to Carlingford area. There was a 6 out there but that was this evening, The morning was 4-5 and the tides were good so we decided to leave at 0645. We queued for 30 minutes to get fish and chips in Mortons and they were good but you got so much that one would have done the two of us. We had met Blue Moon and her skipper Raymond in Portrush and he now tied up next to us. He’s in a motor cruiser and based in Lough Neagh. We went to the Harbour Bar for a few pints where the stereo was playing old Planxty and we met a lovely German couple from Berlin who are on a 10 day walking tour of the North. Raymond and his wife Margaret appeared and a dodgy keyboard player killed the ambiance. We had put a load in the laundry and left it in the drier overnight.

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