Voyage of the Jeanie Johnston/DAY 4:You could walk faster than we travelled last night, Capt Coleman of the Jeanie Johnston told us this morning when he gave us momentous news, Seán Mac Connell.
"We might not make France until Monday at the rate we are going because we are hitting storm after storm. It's the September equinox and the gales have arrived early," he told us.
And in case any of us felt cheered he went on to say we could expect "storm and lull, storm and lull" for the remaining 500 miles of the voyage to mark the Flight of the Earls from Donegal 400 years ago.
He told us that we had already travelled over 150 miles but the wind direction and tides had pinned us in the north Irish Sea and we had lost a lot of time.
However, he said, when we make it to the south coast of England we might make up some of that time. Should the winds come from the west, we can put up all the canvas to replace the paltry amount of sail we have been flying so far.
The Plight of the Earls on this trip is that we have not been short of wind at all. We have had far too much of it coming from the wrong direction.
For instance, at midnight last night, when I and my watchmates went on to our four-hour watch, there was a gale force eight blowing directly into our faces. There was a swell of up to 15ft sweeping over the prow of the ship which did not impress our watch leader, Charlie Cullen, but ensured that most of us will not need laxatives for a few days.
We are from the four corners of Ireland, a little bit like the crew of The Irish Rover. There is Andy Wilson from Drogheda, Donal Friel from Donegal, Niall Cronin, Ray Rooney, Michael English, Seán Carr and Raymond O'Neill from Cork, and Don Campbell from Dublin.
The bad news that we were travelling nearly as slowly as the earls 400 years ago spurred Dan Gallagher to take down his fiddle and give us a few tunes over lunch. Mark McFadden, a young Donegal man, gave us a
rendition of a song about the evictions from the Glenbeigh estates in Donegal which scattered families all across the globe.
Then someone saw basking sharks in the water and we forgot where we were for a time, watching as they swam lazily by, one a mother with its calf.
Over the next day or two we will be travelling into the waters which troubled the original travellers most. The O'Neill and O'Donnell feared capture by the Royal Navy all along the south coast of Ireland. That fear had forced him to take the Atlantic route and out into a very rough sea for all of 13 days before he and his 99 companions were blown back across the Bay of Biscay to the mouth of the Seine.
The contemporary report said that "the wind came straight against the ship and the sailors, since they could not go to Spain, undertook to reach the harbour of Croisic in Brittany". We now know what that means.