Date: Monday, January 21, 2019. 1154Z Location: 53.1631° N, 9.0760° W — Aughinish WX: 205° (SSW) at 20 knots. Cloudy. Cold So, I might have teased in my previous posting that I had some news on the engine front. I will keep you in suspense no more… I’ve sold it! It’s gone, gone, gone. Freed from a peaceful existence in my garage, soon to be powering someone elses boat. Right, first some more back-story. As I mentioned, the original owner had sealed up the cockpit well, and cut a large hole in the cockpit sole. He then installed a Yanmar 1GM10 single-cylinder diesel engine in the boat ..read more

Date: Wednesday, January 16, 2019. 1329Z Location: 53.1631° N, 9.0760° W — Aughinish WX: 305° (NW) at 15 knots. Clear skies. Cold. Waves: 1m So, it’s been a while since I posted a blog entry. In my defence, there’s not much to report. I didn’t get to do much on the boat in the last few months, but 2019 is here now, and once again, work has re-commenced. I will say, however, I’m no fan of blogging for the sake of it. I’d prefer fewer updates with more data than those blogs that have to post daily even if it’s only to tell you what they had for lunch. But, I digress. I thought I’d desc ..read more

Date: Thursday, May 10, 2018. 0936Z Location: 53.1631° N, 9.0760° W — Aughinish WX: 251° (WSW) at 15 knots. Clear sky. Cold. Waves: &lt 1m On Sunday, a good friend of mine lost his six year battle with cancer. The following is a copy of an email I sent to club members, about Henry Lupton. I remember having a conversation with Henry after Wednesday night racing. We were discussing the relative merits of a Hallberg Rassy 42 over a similar sized Najad. The abstract debate covered things like build quality versus brand premium. I neatly segued into a series of complaints about my own ..read more

Date: Friday, May 4, 2018. 1121Z Location: 53.1631° N, 9.0760° W — Aughinish WX: 12 knots from SE (235°). 14°. Waves: 0.5m “Nobody touch anything!” was Niall’s clear instruction to one and all. It was a strange perspective, sitting on the high side of a Sigma 33, staring down at the sea directly below. As a dinghy sailor, I’m used to capsizing. I’m used to that slow-motion car crash as you traverse through the mental states of “yes, we can hold the spinnie on this reach”, through “I don’t think we’ll make it” and eventually “we’re going in…” Before I sailed and raced dinghies, I had ..read more

Date: Tuesday, May 1, 2018. 1118Z Location: 53.1631° N, 9.0760° W — Aughinish WX: 12.5 knots, 192°. Cloudy. Cold. Waves: 0.5m So, yesterday I found a little bit of time to go and figure out what to do with the engine hatch cover. A bit of background might be in order, however… The Achilles 24 comes as standard with a long-shaft outboard engine and an engine mount in the sole of the cockpit. This presents itself as a hatch towards the stern, which when removed, allows you to mount the engine in the little compartment, and when lowered, the prop is approximately in the same position as ..read more

Date: Wednesday, April 4, 2018. 1445Z Location: 53.1631° N, 9.0760° W — Aughinish WX: 18 knots from N. Cold, but Sunny. 8°C A long time ago (no, not in a galaxy far away, I think I was in Boston), I had a conversation over a beer, about working from home. At the time, the Internet had reached a sufficient speed and VPN technology was to a standard that you could work from home and achieve the same productivity as the office. Probably even more productivity than most offices I’ve frequented. I’m sure many people before me had also pondered this question, but it came as a revelation fo ..read more

Date: Thursday, March 15, 2018. 1052Z Location: 53.1631° N, 9.0760° W — Aughinish There are two types of sailors. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data. Sorry, old joke. There are actually hundreds of different types of sailors. Even within the racing fraternity, you have your speed demon athletes, like the Volvo Ocean Race nutters or the America’s Cup sailors. Then there’s the club maniacs, the guys who’ll drive their J-109 to within a hairs breadth of the committee boat in order to win (for a year) a 30 year old tin pot and a club tie. Not to mention the ones who politely si ..read more

Date: Tuesday, March 13, 2018. 1128Z Location: 53.1631° N, 9.0760° W — Aughinish Boats leak. Above the waterline, and sometimes below. An above-the-waterline leak isn’t a bad thing when the boat’s in the water, in that it won’t sink. But it does mean that stuff gets damp. I’ve read countless online articles about how to keep a boat dry, and it’s not a trivial exercise. For the most part, with the boat on the hard, I’ve stored everything I possibly could in the warm and dry attic. But the bilge does fill with water, and it’s annoying. We have no shortage of rainwater in the west of Irel ..read more

On Thursday, November 19th 2009, I flew from Dublin to Las Palmas, to join the Beneteau 40.7 sailing vessel “Beoga” on her voyage across the Atlantic. Not really a sailing log, but almost a decate later, I can still remember the feeling of “departure day.” I had taken a job in Dublin with the IEDR, starting in late October (the 19th or 20th, if memory serves). I was initially staying in a little B&B around the corner from the old IEDR offices in Sandycove and normally I would drive up on a Sunday evening, park the car out front and walk to the office each day. On Friday evenings I’d return ..read more

(Originally published in Medium) Many years ago, before I actually found the time to learn how to sail, I had a large, framed picture in my office similar to the one above. It was a twenty-four foot sailboat, at anchor in a deserted cove with a morning mist adding a sense of serenity and peacefulness to the scene. I hung it in my office at work (back in the days when we had offices, and we weren’t piled up on top of each other in an open-plan dystopia). On those days when my work life seemed to be up to 11 on a scale of one to ten, I’d stop for a moment and stare at the picture. I’d sigh, and ..read more