Apologies to anyone still reading but it’s been a hectic couple of weeks and the blog is well behind. Full disclosure: I am now sitting at home, mug of tea in hand, watching it bucket down outside and feeling rather pleased with myself in that the boat is now tucked up in a marina in Liverpool and I don’t have to go outside in the rain and wind unless I want to, which is not often. Definitely a step up from sailing at the wrong end of September. A few posts to describe how I got here (there, I should say, I got here on the train from Lime Street of course), and then I am done until next year and the internet will be a better place without me.
Cast your mind back to early September and that bonkers heatwave. Where would you rather be when it hits 33 degrees in London? Correct. That place where the mist rolls in from you-know-where. This time it actually did, to the extent that we had to motor in a flat and foggy calm all the way from Gigha to Northern Ireland in temperatures barely above 15 degrees. We both started the day in shorts and regretted it. Having swum ashore onto a white beach the day before, in my case at least, we were expecting a breezy Carribean, and got a rather chilly pancake. Yet another terrifying headland passed, and a famous piece of dangerous water motored through. As a result, this was the only time I have actually been out of sight of land on this whole trip, on the shortest sea crossing – the 11 miles between Scotland and Northern Ireland.
What a shock when we arrived off the coast of Antrim. After months in Scotland I had quite forgotten that coasts in other parts of the UK have roads and villages and people. It was like arriving back in London but with more limited food options. We gawped (well, I did, Tim having spent a normal summer in inhabited places) at a coastline so, well, if not man-made then at least man-defined, although we had to get within a mile to see anything at all. Rather oddly, we could hear it before we saw it, and a sound I had almost forgotten: an unnecessarily de-silenced exhaust pipe of an unnecessarily over-tuned car, revved unnecessarily high. Then another. How odd, must be a trick of the mist, you often hear odd sounds in fog.
We’d been planning to return to Glenarm in the hopes of getting to the castle shop in time (see Jolly Antrim-on-sea), but were told the marina was booked out for a race, so we had decided to go to a village called Cushendall in Red Bay instead where visitor moorings were promised. This looked like a good place to spend a hot afternoon (the mist had slowly evaporated) as there might be ice creams and Guinness ashore, so we blew up the dinghy. A deafening noise and another screaming exhaust, this time very close. A speedboat came tearing through the moorings, did whatever speedboat drivers call a handbrake turn in the bay, and came hurtling back. He was followed by two jetskis, one of whom was trying to drown out his exhaust with angry heavy metal at full volume. We assumed this entertainment would wear off after 20 minutes but they had brought their friends and some petrol cans so they could carry on all afternoon.
We dinghied ashore to find the boatyard where we could pay for the mooring and were disappointed all round. Red Bay Boats build a very different kind of boat: large RIBs with huge engines for marine police, pilots and speed freaks. We felt a bit out of place, especially when the friendly bloke we met told us there hadn’t been visitor moorings there for years, and the receptionist told us the best place to drink Guinness was called something like Smelly Jimmy’s and there would be live music. Food didn’t seem to be an option unless we went to the golf club. We’d hoped for showers in the caravan park but everywhere was locked, and we saw not a single ice cream vendor – astonishing in my experience of Northern Ireland.
Back on the boat and the jetskis had been joined by some other speedboats and our mooring that wasn’t for visitors was beginning to get very close to the one next door, so we gave up and motored over to the wide and empty Red Bay around the corner and anchored right in the middle. We could still hear car exhausts in the distance sounding like practice for the Monaco GP, but at least they were in the distance. Some nutters – sorry, long distance open water swimmers – came up to say hello before heading off to Cushendall and back before dinner, and we sat down to canned Guinness in the cockpit. Somehow we could live without ice cream.
Tim’s last day was also the last day of whatever you might call an Indian Summer if you were in Northern Ireland. We managed to sail for a bit and even saw the famous Glens of Antrim which Sarah and I had missed in the mist months before, as Red Bay turns out to be the mouth of one of them.
I had been looking forward to spending our last night in Carrickfergus Marina, which I had assumed would be like Bangor but posher. I’m sorry to say I had based this expectation entirely on Supermarket Snobbery, and I deserve the come-uppance I got. I had looked at the map and seen that, whereas Bangor only has an Asda and it’s a good ten minutes’ walk uphill, Carrickfergus has a Sainsbury’s on the marina’s doorstep and a Tesco Extra beyond, and I had extrapolated from this a town even more civilised and bordering on genteel. That and the fact that Carrick (as I believe it’s known locally) has a castle where Bangor only has a temporary Ferris Wheel.
Wrong. Bangor has loud Ian Paisley soundalikes (see Didn’t we have a lovely time…) but they were mainly drinking flat whites outside vegan cafes; Carrick had tattooed gentlemen in vests drinking lager outside pubs at 4pm and every lampost had an Orange flag or a Red Hand on it. ‘Protocol Means War’ read a welcoming piece of graffiti, which somehow managed to sound a lot more menacing than it reads. Even the original Maud’s ice cream parlour was a bit scruffy and next to a betting shop. We were relieved to find that the only restaurant not in a retail park had a table, but we were certainly the only diners in boat shoes .
Sunday morning Tim climbed into a taxi having missed, I felt, Northern Ireland’s best side. I had momentarily considered going to church just for the experience, but decided against it in case somebody asked me a question and I accidentally gave the wrong answer. Instead, I looked at the fog, chatted to the still-ridiculously-friendly locals in the marina and waited for Sainsbury’s to open so I could be somewhere where I felt more at home.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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