Ardfern to Kilmelford

As we said before, you can have too much of a good thing... So, despite loving the Ardfern area, it was time to move on. We started by visiting the local shop and were quietly amazed at the stock. Frozen filo pastry that we hadn't seen in Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsburys etc en route as an example. The nice storekeeper told us that he'd recently been visited by the students from Gordonstoun school who were on a sailing holiday. 40 kids, each brandishing a £20 or £50 note. Apparently he knows to stock up with change when they are due in. Wonder if the queen gave Charles pocket money for such trips?

One interesting thought - he was an English guy and might have been from Cornwall. Not because of his accent but because he had really bad teeth. Of course, we don't know if he brought them with him up north or developed the nice brown stumps here.

The crew had called Kilmelford Yacht Centre (a grand title for an old gravel yard and shed) to see if they had a free mooring buoy that we could use. They run some big heavy duty moorings in a sheltered corner at the head of Loch Melfort amidst more great scenery.

For the non boating folks - a buoy mooring is rare for us up here. All around Scotland the various development agencies installed mooring buoys to try and promote tourism by water, typically outside hotels / restaurants. Of course, with government efficiency, they had a standard 10 or 15 ton maximum capacity just as everyone was buying bigger and heavier boats. They also didn't budget any money for maintenance so as the chains rusted it all got interesting. Government agency solution - hand them over to the hotels. Neat move. Of course, the resulting bunch of buoys are useless for us as fully laden we push 40 tons. They just fill up all the best anchorages!

The nice temp lady in the office told us we could pick up number 303. Capacity - 50 tons. All OK then.

The trip was a bit hazy but no radar needed. We passed the Gulf of Coryvreckan which is infamous amongst boating folks as the home of fierce tides and big whirlpools (3rd largest in the world) - here is a borrowed example:

Imagine going through the big hole in the middle in a little boat like ours. Actually don't - not a nice mental image. In rough weather there is a standing wave that can be about 9 metres high in the entrance. Nice and friendly. Today, it looked and was much less threatening:

Another very calm trip (apart from the eddies and smaller whirlpools that we had to negotiate) with gentle views:

 and some interesting pilotage when the crew (trying to avoid the camera, as usual,!) had to check on Patrick's navigation between the rocks:

The one downside to the Lochs as a cruising person is the number of ugly fish farms that are now around. Loads and loads of structures like this beauty:

Of course, the employment and revenue they bring is much needed in the remoter areas and the odd escapee salmon might just get illegally caught by people nearby too... One challenge of the trip today was the vast number of pot markers. No rant here about using old litre milk bottles as markers - just that putting a string of them between two islands makes navigation interesting. For the German friends, that is the English other meaning of interesting of course.

A bit of a challenge picking up buoy 303 in Kilmelford though. We looked hard for it and ended up using another one in roughly the same place. When we took the little dinghy ashore later on, we found 303 - a little hard to moor up to:

They were a bit confused about what was where, we think....

Another awesome spot. Wouldn't want to be here in a big blow though.

Happily snuggled up to buoy 301!:

Maintenance: Well, when the crew went to open the deli drawer in the fridge it, apparently, just fell out in her hand. Captain has to figure out how the various (luckily unbroken) support rail, runners etc etc go together to support the enormous drawer fitted to the Sub-Zero fridge. The captain is, or course, deliriously happy as all the documentation doesn't show how these are constructed. A job for tomorrow, wine beckons....