DG0503 The Yacht, Loughshinny

At the time of scheduling this post, it's set to go out on the first of August; and is going to be the last post on an increased six day a week schedule. 

I'm not going to revert to the five or even four day a week schedules I've had for much of 2025, but crash straight back to the long held three day schedule - Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. 

Those days will be 'reserved' as such for writeups; with any other posts done on other days - because at the time of writing I have all of three visits in my backlog to write up, two visits scheduled to happen within a few hours of writing and then less than 40 more places left to go. So my backlog is gone, basically; and I'd like to actually have some posts for the rest of the month...

But back to the actual pub writeup. I am calling this my "last traditional pub" visit; as everything else left to go is either a pub-restaurant, a hotel, a theatre or a strip club (which I'm still trying to figure a justification for not going to). The Yacht isn't an incredibly old pub, having been opened in 1960 as a single storey, flat roof extension to the building housing the owners grocery store.

Old photos inside the pub show that it has been extended and modified over the years, in to a much larger, fully two storey - but still flat roofed pub. You can disregard stereotypical British opinions of flat roofed pubs (as criticised in this article) when in Ireland, and indeed this isn't on an estate anyway!

Indeed, the pub is in a small village; and various reasons led to its closure in 2006. The son of the original owner bought it back in 2012, reopened it and has operated it since, and there was a reasonable volume of customers when we dropped in. 

I did this with a driver as I assumed it was basically inaccessible otherwise - however, the 33/33a buses stop basically outside the door. Parking really isn't great, so the bus may have been a better option.

1021424 Blue Bar

A surprisingly, well, gigantic premises on the way out to Red Island in Skerries; this used to be "Blue Café Bar", and the food service still seems to be a major element here - we were asked if we wanted menus at least five times during a fairly quick visit!

This was done with a driver; not that it really needed to be - but the pub we were intending to go to next (and did) opened later we expected it to; so rather than leave it un-done (it is not the most accessible without a driver, albeit it does have buses), we came here to grab an unexpected extra tick.

Sun generates crowds in Skerries, but Blue Bar was less busy than the other seaside bars slightly closer to the town centre, albeit possibly just because there's far more space here. You can pick between outdoor seating, or all various types of pub seating options inside. 

We ended up at the bar, slightly mystified looking at the more unusual cocktail ingredients/garnishes they had on display or were prepping for the evening. There's a reasonable range of draft beers here, as well as their extensive cocktail options. Checking to try find when the Cafe bit of the name was dropped - unsuccessfully - found many people raving about their chicken wings. I do not eat chicken wings, or realistically any meat on the bone; and my driver is vegetarian, so this wasn't much use to us - but as I know the popularity of wings, it's worth mentioning when somewhere is reputed for them!