More yoga! This time it was the anchor winch and we were lucky. The morning after the gale the winds had dropped to almost nothing. We came to lift the anchor and nothing happened, the anchor winch had failed, it wouldn't go up, it wouldn't go down. If that had happened last night as we anchored in 30+ knots of wind we would have had a spot of bother. Still, it all keeps me amused!

Winch fixed (a wire had broken) we sailed up the coast a little to be met by St Brendan, the Irish saint who is said to have preceded Columbus and got to America around 600ad, not bad in skin 'curagh'; it made me feel a little whimpy thinking our recent blow was hairy! This is St Brendan pointing forward to the unknown, cape blowing in the wind behind him.


On monday we set off for Galway, 70 miles north. Wind force 4 on our beam gave us a great sail at 6/7 knots. We were joined for a short while by a Minke whale swimming alongside us; he didn't show much of himself, only about 10' of his great back arched out of the water every minute or so.

We stopped briefly a couple of hours out of Galway in the middle of a big flock of sea birds diving into the sea, a sure sign of a school of mackerel. Sails rolled away we drifted with the birds for 20 minutes and pulled out a dozen mackerel, that was tea sorted!

We are now leaving the boat in Galway for 10 days and heading home. I will be back 1st of June with Melanie for a week. Pete and Chris are then out for a week and Paul rejoins me 15 July.

The Volvo round the world race yachts finish the race in Galway the week Melanie and I are here so Galway is gearing up for the party of the year, more on that in a couple of weeks; bye for  now.