Round Ireland (in a boat!)

About the Journey

Ireland - being an island - didn't feature in my windsurf of mainland Europe, which made it a natural choice to sail round when the opportunity presented. This was a double-handed effort and our craft of choice was a Laser 2000 dinghy. The boat is a heavy beast, so finding easy places to land was sometimes difficult. We worked out a system with inflatable rollers and a pulley system, and after some practice could haul up at quite awkward locations. We camped every night of the journey, mostly on or behind sandy beaches, but sometimes on concrete car parks...

Many thanks to my first crew/co-helm - Mark Newton - who helped sail the boat over from Scotland to Ireland, and then down to Dublin (Skerries). For the rest of the journey Helene Erlandsen was crew and occasional co-helm. Helene is from Norway, and quite an adventurer having skied across Greenland, but in terms of sailing she definitely started out as a novice. It was a unfair ask really - to circumnavigate Ireland in a tiny dinghy - and there were days that would have tested experienced ocean sailors, so she did great.

There's no book about this one yet (maybe later) but we posted a few updates via Facebook on the way round.

Track of the Journey

Tracking is from the always amazing YB Tracking.

Updates

For ease of admin we used Facebook for posting some pictures and videos. Apologies to those of you who prefer not to use the platform. Hopefully the widget below might still provide a way to see something.

We hope you enjoyed following / enjoy a revisit!