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Tuesday 07/05/2013 Terryglass - Meelick Quay - Fanning’s Lock

Length of boat trip: 3.5 hours

Motto of the day: Our last day and a nice chat

Our last day starts with some sun. We have to go upstream.

Above Portumna we spot three boats in a row like on a highway. I initially thought I had a glass too much last night. ;)

The crew has become tired after three weeks boating or is it just the relax effect?

But we have to pack our luggage and the boxes. We start with that moored above the lock. After lunch we drive on to Meelick Quay. Here we meet PJ again and have a nice chat.

The wind has picked up when we later in the afternoon drive further upstream and moor at Fanning’s lock. A hired boat, which has anchored beside an island, is towed by staff of the hire company arriving with another boat. We pack the rest and will drive tomorrow the short way back to Banagher and leave.

Shannon Airport Max 16.2°C Min 10.5°C Rainfall 7 mm (during our last night) Sun hours 0.1 (We had more.) Mean Wind F4

Summary

This year we had less traffic on the water and also the May bank holiday weekend was quiet. The owners of the private boats seemed to be still in winterization mode.We met friendly people and have now put some more faces to names.

Four hire boats have gone on the wrong side of the marker and another two skippers changed their mind at the last second. All these incidents occured when the navigation markers are changing and leading to a mooring. The hire boat companies show people who are new to boating a video where this is mentioned and in case of Silverline they also stress this point during the instruction. In two of this cases the second skipper unquestioningly followed the first boat. Every hire boat has a good chart on board and they should be read.

We had not too much rain and on average more than six and a half hours sun every day. We had only two dull days (days with less than 0.5 hours of sun) in three weeks. It was warmer than 2012. Five days had max temperatures of 15 or more degrees; one day had more than 17°C. The average max temperature was around 12.8°C.We had no frost overnight and just 3 days with max below 10°C. We also got some strong winds with gale force gusts but we were lucky as the week before we arrived and the week after our departure were more stormy and wet.

We spent 20 great boating days on the Shannon. All in all we boat nearly 600 km in 70 hours, 3.5 hours on average per day with 8.5 km/h average.

We saw fewer Curlews than last year but heard more Cuckoos calling. The Silvereels are again in the small river at Terryglass. Scientists assume that the Eel will become extinct in 20-30 years.

Every boating holiday is different and so had this one brought some new experiences to us although we felt very well to cruise on well-known waterways without stress and just to be back on the Shannon and to relax.