Ireland - West Cork, Summer 2016
Wish we could say that over the past four years we have been enjoying the beautiful Irish coast, harbours and scenery but it has not been the case I'm afraid, reality, life, jobs etc all seem to have conspired to steal away any little time we had hooped to get away on Kadoona. Its hard to believe its 2016 already, well its over half way through 2016 and the summer is drawing to an end. Although this is our fourth summer we have been 'home', its the first that we have had the opportunity to use Kadoona the way we had hoped.
We only arrived home in the middle of the first summer and although we did get down West it was cut short by a job offer. We moved off the boat early in 2013, yes we did spend a large part of the first winter living onboard! The next summer Kadoona didn't even go in the water, shameful but maybe we needed the break to appreciate her and I was away at sea so we just never got around to doing all the jobs we needed to do and before we knew it the winter was on us and it just wasn't worth launching her.
We did get West in summer 2014 but it was late in the summer as I was racing a fair bit, Cork week, Barcelona Classics on Mariette of 1915 and the RS 400 Europeans in Lake Garda. It was good to go to Schull and the Islands and spend a bit of time with the family.
Summer 2015 was a bit of a write off. Not as far as sailing went, I managed a transatlantic on a great Southern Winds 98 footer called 'Windfall' but what was summoned to be a two week delivery turned into a seven week mission but thats another story. The long and the short of it was that apart from a couple of overnight trips down the coast we got precious little time to enjoy Kadoona.
Laani was eventually made permanent in her job this year, great news but she had very little holidays as everything was reset to zero like she was starting anew! This meant that she was only able to take a few days off, we did manage some time in Barcelona and when I got Kadoona down west we had three great weekends in and around Schull, Baltimore and Cape Clear. Magical times, not quite cruising the Caribbean but we will take it.
We only arrived home in the middle of the first summer and although we did get down West it was cut short by a job offer. We moved off the boat early in 2013, yes we did spend a large part of the first winter living onboard! The next summer Kadoona didn't even go in the water, shameful but maybe we needed the break to appreciate her and I was away at sea so we just never got around to doing all the jobs we needed to do and before we knew it the winter was on us and it just wasn't worth launching her.
We did get West in summer 2014 but it was late in the summer as I was racing a fair bit, Cork week, Barcelona Classics on Mariette of 1915 and the RS 400 Europeans in Lake Garda. It was good to go to Schull and the Islands and spend a bit of time with the family.
Summer 2015 was a bit of a write off. Not as far as sailing went, I managed a transatlantic on a great Southern Winds 98 footer called 'Windfall' but what was summoned to be a two week delivery turned into a seven week mission but thats another story. The long and the short of it was that apart from a couple of overnight trips down the coast we got precious little time to enjoy Kadoona.
Laani was eventually made permanent in her job this year, great news but she had very little holidays as everything was reset to zero like she was starting anew! This meant that she was only able to take a few days off, we did manage some time in Barcelona and when I got Kadoona down west we had three great weekends in and around Schull, Baltimore and Cape Clear. Magical times, not quite cruising the Caribbean but we will take it.