This year the Celtic Sea Kayaking trip headed for Ireland. We were fairly flexible and would head to the part of the coast that offered the best conditions for mini sea trips camping out of our boats for 2,3 and 4 days at a time. The original plan was to head to Galway and paddle a large section of the Connemara coastline. The conditions proved to be a little more testing this year compared to the previous 3 summers with large stable high-pressure systems stationary over most of Scotland during the late summer.
 Chris Bolton |  Debbie Hughes |  Frankie Annan |
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 Ian Bell |  Andrew Garland |  Catriona Hare |
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Day 01 Saturday – Keith – Ferry to Dublin
We left Bootle docks on Saturday morning aboard the Norbank. This was a roll-on roll-off ferry that was designed for commercial lorry traffic and had about 100 cabins with en-suite facilities (which Frankie made good use of).
We were dreading the crossing as the forecasted storm Betty was due to hit Ireland on the Saturday evening.
Storm Betty was due on Saturday, and we were dreading the 8-hour crossing but it turned out to be better than we first thought. Three complimentary meals were provided with the tickets which turned out to be of a very high quality. Andy was always first to the restaurant and then first to the bar when it opened after the meal service. The storm waves even gave the three cars a free wash every time they crashed over the open car deck.
With strong winds from Betty forecast to remain into Sunday we decided to opt for plan C and headed for a very nice campsite (https://www.camacvalley.com/) on the edge of Dublin to reformulate our paddling plan in the light of storm Betty.