The forecast strong gale (F9) hit us overnight on Saturday / Sunday. We were being blown onto the pontoon but it wasn't too uncomfortable as the fetch over the river was small and there were a couple of big boats moored to the windward side of us. Joe, in Ethmara, a Malo 37 in front of us was not so lucky and lost a couple of fenders - so knocked us up at 6 am Sunday to borrow a fender a the front of our boat that wasnt being squashed. We leant him two and blew up our inflatable fenders to give us a bit more protection.
The wind was 25knts + for most of the day. Ellan Vannin, a Benny 411 from Ardrossan, tied up in the small "sheltered" marina in Arklow measured 45 knts of wind over night.
Sunday was then a bit of a rest day including shopping in the very nearby Aldi, only 2 minutes walk from the pontoon.
On Saturday night we had gone to the Raj restraunt on the river. Nice Indian food. Sunday night we went to the pub on the bridge that was very pleasant and watched the Spain v Italy game that was very boring. Got my daily ration of Guinness.
Overall I liked Arklow and was glad we found it. Nice people and good shops and the facilities (showers etc) were good. No chandlers or diesel etc and there was no water tap within 200m of the boat. One thing not so good was the colour of the water in the river. With all the rain on Saturday, the river was in flood and very brown. The colour was partly due to the raw sewarage outlet upstream under the bridge. Not very pleasant when you know that. We will need to give all the ropes and fenders a good wash down when we find the next hose pipe.
The weather forecast for Monday looks promising so the plan is to go tomorrow.
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