The Crossing

Day 10 - We had planned to leave early for our crossing of the Irish Sea, to get the best of the forecast weather and to get some help from the tides where we could. The day dawned sunny and fine so we left at 8.00 as planned and straight away had good going with more help from the tide in Loch Ryan than we had anticipated. This set the scene for the whole trip as we had good weather, good wind and good seas and made good speed. We had made our calculations on getting either 4 or 5 knots so we thought the journey would take between 8 and 10 hours to Bangor.

However we averaged 6 knots and at times recorded over 7 knots, a very good speed for Lunar Sea. We had a northerly wind most of the way which is what we wanted but it did make it a bit chilly.

No 9 buoy heading up Belfast Lough into Belfast.
We had planned to make for Bangor, at the mouth of Belfast Lough about 12 miles from Belfast but as we had made such good speed we decided to go all the way up into the centre of Belfast to the marina at Abercorn Basin, right next to the Titanic exhibition centre. A fabulous location. We tied up at 17.00 so it had been a long trip but uneventful, which is what we like. After a much needed snooze we decided that we had to go out and sample the local Guinness. We walked across the pedestrian bridge over the River Lagan Weir to Queen Square, which seemed very quiet and empty. We dived into the first pub, which happened to be one of the many that claims to be the oldest in Belfast..McHugh's. This had been a quay side pub of some ill repute in the past but is quite respectable now! The quay has since been filled in to make Queen Square. On the way back at about 10.30 p.m.  the pedestrian bridge was heaving with thousands of people. We stopped to ask a couple of ladies of about our age what was going on and it was the Michael Buble concert at the SSE Arena emptying out. The two fans were very happy by their own admittance (one too many vodkas they said)  and were waiting for one of their daughter's to pick them up! Very Ab Fab!


They shook our hands and welcomed us to Belfast with hugs and kisses! A lovely welcome to this friendly city..and still daylight in the sky.




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