Magical Inishbofin

After the best part of a week of gales and heavy rain, our passage from Galway Bay round Slyne Head to Inishbofin was sunny with light airs. We passed Rossaveel and Lettermullan looking inviting against the mountain backdrop and decided to run up through the Inner Passage off Roundstone towards Slyne Head. There were Galway Hookers racing in the middle distance and what looks like a nasty rash of rocks and shoals on the chart is actually quite manageable at a reasonable speed in good visibility.  We toyed with the idea of cutting the corner and slipping through Joyce’s Passage, which could have saved us about an hour clawing our way around Slyne Head, but the tide was not particularly favourable, the residual SW swell might have pushed us onto a lee shore and anyway, the wind was filling in a bit.  

As we bore away around Slyne Head, we poled out the genoa initially, before deciding that we needed more power and swapped it for our glorious light blue Hyde spinnaker. The afternoon slipped past amid dolphin pods, gannet attacks, guillemots and the magnificent Connemara backdrop. The coastline all the way from Rossaveal to Achill is the most fabulous cruising ground. This was why we came all this way!

The entrance to the harbour at Inishbofin is on the south side of the island. There are a couple of highly visible white stone daymark beacons that have guided mariners safely in through the rocks for a couple of centuries, so it was slightly irritating to see that the Lighthouse electronic charts appeared to show a 1.2m patch on the transit. The Navionics electronic chart wasn’t helpful either. The shoreline on either side is unforgiving (er…dangerous) and a big swell would make this quite a sporting exercise. Norman Kean’s excellent Sailing Directions for the South and West Coasts of Ireland pilot book  showed the two daymarks in a different place to either electronic chart – but also carried a warning that electronic navigation should not be relied on around this coast. Daria Blackwell’s very useful ‘Cruising the Wild Atlantic Way’ makes a similar point. I will return to this issue in a separate ‘technical’ blog in the next few weeks.

We chose to believe Norman, Daria and the seafarers who built the daymark transit. It was low water as we approached, but even so  the echo sounder did not drop below 10m until we turned east around the back of Gun Island and the inner harbour opened up ahead of us. The Sailing Directions are correct – anchoring can be tricky on account of the inexorable proliferation of moorings and the hard sandy bottom. Fortunately another yacht was just leaving quite a substantial mooring buoy and they indicated very clearly that we should pick it up.  Unlike so many of the moorings around this coast which are publicly owned and marked with a weight limit of 15 tonnes, this seemed designed for bigger things. The ferries alongside the pier just to the north of us looked likely candidates so the following morning, after a foray onto Port Island to explore the ruined Cromwellian fort that guards the entrance, I decided to seek permission rather than forgiveness and set off ashore in the rubber boat to enquire.

The ferry was loading. The Master, Dermot, was busy but also managing to talk to everyone. I caught his eye and we had a very positive discussion about the beauty of the island, our boats and the absolutely ideal buoy that we had picked up. It was indeed his, but as it wasn’t really his he couldn’t accept payment for it either. If he needed it, he would let us know, but he didn’t need it. His wife Caroline runs the Galley café on the east end of the island and they had fresh crab so we got our bikes and went to investigate. In glorious sunshine, the place is just magical. There’s a beautiful sandy beach on the east side between Rinnalee and the island of Inishlyon. Millions of cowrie shells, no people. Some curraghs pulled up on the dunes. And the most spectacular view across the Sound to Cleggan and the Twelve Pins mountain range. Lunch at the Galley was one of the best crab salads I’ve ever had and we pushed on around to Rusheen Bay and the north east corner of the island. The small village here must have been dedicated to fishing in the past, but today the houses seem mostly holiday homes – with some full time residents to bring a bit of tone. It must be quiet in the winter… But in mid-July, it was nicely balanced – a handful of families doing beachy things; a couple of builders across from the mainland torn between staring at the mesmerising views and not plastering themselves into the brickwork, a boatman tinkering with his outboard motor. Peace, tranquility even, but not idleness or emptiness.

Beyond the village, we pushed our bikes along a farm track that gradually petered out. We thought we didn’t need a map, because how difficult can it be on an island this size? In the end, not being as agile as the sheep around us, we retraced our steps and found ourselves in The Beach pub back at the harbour. It was packed. All the day trippers were waiting for Dermot and his ferry to show up. In the main window seat, a group of around eight musicians were in full flight. Some of them had been playing at a wedding in the hotel next door. Others joined them and fitted in like peas in a pod – a glorious demonstration of the ability of music to bring people together. I guess the odd Guinness helps… Nobody wanted the ferry to come.

Back in the dinghy, we saw that our friends John and Jane from Shivinish (last seen in Dingle) had joined us in the anchorage. The party (albeit without the live music) continued onboard their boat. Is this as good as it gets?