I surface at last

At last! I have been able to get a signal on my wireless modem and also manage to down load a photo. I don't want to excite you too much so I will restrict myself this time to this one, which was my lunch some time ago, actually election day I think. This communications revolution which is supposed to put me in instant touch with the world wherever the wind blows me has proved to be not quite up to snuff. However, today I am in Bangor, that's the Irish one not the welsh. It's a busy seaside place about 10 miles from Belfast. It is humming today because it's their summer maritime festival. The crowds around the sea front as always are quite a shock after the solitude of the open ocean.

I stopped herebecause I have the inevitable problems with my old barky and needed a spare part which I knew would be available here. I also needed to consult a doctor because I thought I had broken my neck! Literally I mean. I had a tumble in my dinghy while attaching a line to a mooring buoy and developed a distinct pain in the neck. However the nice nurse with a very attrractive Ulster accent assuredcme that it was merely a muscle sprain. I have an enforced layover until Monday because my spare part has to be delivered from Belfast.

I have been pondering about the importance of tides to seafarers who choose to rely on the wind for power. Modern sailors in powerful motor driven vessels don't worry about them much, but to a slow old boat like mine, two knots of tide can make a big difefrence. If it's with you, your speed might be 7 knots, if it's against you 3 knots, less than half! Of course every schoolboy knows that the tide is influenced by the moon and rises to high water twice a day. If you ever had a seaside holiday you could hardly escape that observation. But it's a lot more complex than that in fact. Although the rhythm is fairly fixed, the height of the tide varies every day, every week, every month and every year. This vast mass of water flows in and out of the Irish Sea, through its northern and southern entrances in a complicated patterm determined by the geography and the nature of the sea bed. Fortunately, generations of hard working surveyors have spent wholeworking lives charting this complex patterm so that the modern sailor has access to all the secrets for a few quid spent on a tidal atlas. Observing these ever changing movements of the waters a romantic like me can see it all as the breathing of some underwater giant. now shallow, now deep.

Northern Ireland is a delightful place, a well kept secret for most English people, but it's not Scotland and my arrival here is not getting me around the UK. My chances of being in Orkney by midsummer are fading, but someone said somewhere that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. I am not sure that I agree with that principal but I am still travelling hopefully and, perhaps more important, happily!