Newbies on Lough Derg

It's always a delight to have Winter Solstice back on Lough Derg. It's a beautiful lake and we have a glorious time until we get sick of the big boats and of apparently being invisible.
When we bought our first boat, a 23 foot Freeman cruiser, there were one or two wash-producing monsters on the lake. This was just as well as we knew nothing. Our only experience was a week spent on a hire boat on the Shannon.

Venturing on to Lough Derg for the first time was both thrilling and alarming. North of Killaloe for perhaps half a mile the river is enclosed by friendly banks on which are houses, trees and other familiar, land-based objects. Then you pass through two markers for left and right and find yourself in the open lake where anything can happen. Water stretches north in a misty expanse. The banks are no longer within swimming distance.

We had to move this boat, then called Towed in a Hole, to a berth in a marina on the south of the lake. At home we feverishly studied our Captain’s Guide, (given out by the hire boat company), and were distressed to learn that in order to reach our new safe haven we had to cross a Hatched Area, marked on the chart as out of bounds to boats because it was dangerous and shallow and possibly contained dragons.

We took advice and learned that if we took a straight course across Tinerana Bay we would avoid all shoals and other dangers. This sounded simple but the harbour entrance was not easy to spot and there were no markers to guide us in. Joe was positioned at the front as look out, anxiously peering into the water, and I drove cautiously forward.

The narrow opening, bordered by tightly mown grass and well-manicured bushes, came into view. We puttered into the small cut and there was the little harbour we had visited by land. At the end of it was our berth and my heart rate finally subsided.