Climbing down the ladder onto the boat was a good exercise in itself. The skipper said that the sea was moderate and so they would be going. If the sea had been rough they would not have gone out at all. He told us that it was a 40 minute ride to the first island which was a bird sanctuary. Gannets. We would not stop there though just go around it and then continue on to the big island Skellig Michael.
We headed out and the water seemed very calm to me. Then I realized that we were still in the bay. Once we had left the bay the water turned into what I would refer to as a roller coaster ride. Not a big roller coaster but not a little one either. Maureen had told me that she always sat outside as she preferred the wind in her face. I had started out inside the small boat but as soon as we hit the open water I moved myself outside also.
I am prone to motion sickness and recognize those feelings very well. Outside with the wind and the salt spray in my face I was fine.It was a real adventure.
As we pulled closer to the bird sanctuary there were gannets skimming the water. They were amazing. How they didn't crash into the waves that seemed to be everywhere was a wonder to me. once we got up to the bird sanctuary you could see hundreds if not thousands of birds. We did not go around the island at that time as the skipper said that we would do that on the way back.
The big Skellig Michael island was about another 15 minutes away and it got more impressive the closer we got.
A huge triangle of rock coming out of the water.
The dock on the island is in a little natural break in the rocks called the blindmans cove. Getting off the boat was an adventure all in itself. The skipper ran a rope from the bow of the boat around a pole on the small dock and his deck hand ran a rope from the stern of the boat to another pole on the dock. As each wave came in and raised the boat up to the level of the landing a passenger would step/jump off with the assistance of a third deck hand on the landing and then make their way up the steep stairs to the wharf area. The skipper and the second deck hand managed the ropes by either pulling them tight or giving them slack to keep the boat from pulling too far away from the dock.
I did get some photos with my waterproof camera.
Then we went for a walk up a wide walled pathway.
It felt very secure.
There were spectacular views all the way around the island.
the sides of the island were so steep that this path must
have been cut into the island.
At one point there was a cover built up to keep falling rocks from landing on you as you followed the path. It didn't look to me like it could keep anything big from just going right through it but maybe it could deflect the smaller stones.
There were birds everywhere. I saw puffins.
This was exciting as I had never seen live puffins before. They are marvelous birds. There were kitty-wakes and gannets too, also very lovely.
I had somehow gotten ahead of Maureen on the path so turned and got a picture of her coming up.
After a time we came to the more dangerous part of the walk. There was a large sign with lots of warnings about the hazards and how the government was not responsible for anything that happened as it was your choice to do it or not. Fair warning.
We watched as others went up the very steep stone steps, switchbacking up to about 50 feet above us and thought well that is why we were there. Both Maureen and I suffer from a degree of vertigo. We had decided that we would go as far as we could go and then come back down. We made it to just above the Wailing Woman's Cross a natural stone formation about halfway up to the monastery.
If we had continued about another 50 yards, we found out later, we would have found ourselves on a wide set of stairs in the center of the island instead of on the rather narrow stone steps with no hand rails to comfort us, only the openness of the steep stone slope and the sea crashing on the rocks far below. OK, I exaggerate a bit, but, there were no handrails and if we had fallen we could have serioulsy hurt ourselves.
Just a few weeks before we got there an older man had been walking back down from the summit where the monks had built their domed huts and he slipped and fell about 50 feet onto the wide pathway. He had died.
On the island there is a helicopter pad for emergencies. It is placed further up the pathway, rather precariously,
I thought, on a platform mounted onto the wall of the island. It had been used that day.
We sat by the Wailing Woman's Cross for a bit and then slowly worked our way back down the steep stone staircases to the wide path to have our small lunch and talk to the other people who had also not been able to go up to the top. Even though we did not see the beehive huts of the monks that lived on the island 600 hundred years ago, it was still a very cool experience.
As we walked back to the boat we ran across a woman who was having a hard time of it. She got real sea sick and did not want to go on the boat again. I felt real bad for her.
While we were on the island our boat pulled out of the dock and anchored in the waters off the island. We all gathered to wait for our boat,
the Flying Horse and when it came in we got on in pretty much the same way we got off,
waiting for the boat to rise to the level of the platform so we could step/ jump onto it. the ride back was much calmer. the Bird sanctuary was so cool. The boat pulled in very close the the island and we saw seals, gannetts, puffins, kitty-wakes and those little dark sea birds.
It was great.
The ride back seemed longer than the ride out and when we pulled into the harbour we had to go very slow as the tide had gone out a bit and there were rocks we had to avoid. At one point we could see the bottom and we did scrape a rock. Seems there is this sand bar that needs to be dredged. By the time we got on shore I was soaked from head to foot and really had to find a washroom.
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