Enjoying Ardfern in the sun, yes, brilliant sun and then the biblical rain

Ardfern was being very kind indeed. Sunny and warm. So, we did a few outside boat jobs, then the bikes came out for a ride to Craignish. As you can see from the map, there is really only one road option. The one shown that heads north west across the peninsular is not really a road for very far. We know, we've walked it a couple of times.

The road down to Craignish was a rather rough / poorly maintained single track with passing places offering. About as good as you would expect in the area. The best news is that there was almost no traffic - perhaps because there is really nowhere to go at the other end of it:

The views are wonderful, this is towards the end of the track, on the "other side" of the land:

and then back looking along Loch Craignish:

This image made us feel a bit seasick, but on dry land. When the camera stitched the panoramic view together it decided that water can lay in gentle curves:

Back in Adrfern, we saw the Princess Royal's yacht being launched and prepared (that is Princess Anne in old money). A nice Rustler 44:

with an unpronounceable name but membership of the Royal Yacht Squadron:

I guess they could not blackball her application.

The evening views from the berth reminded us how if you want to be in a marina, this is one of the prettiest:

On a mooring buoy there was a stately old Fleur de Lys motor yacht looking totally at home in the area:

Ardfern has quite an "up market" bunch of yachts on the pontoons compared to many other places. Also a thriving repair and maintenance facility too.

Sadly, after two weeks of no rain up north, we had this forecast:

so we opted to stay put for another day and do a little inside cleaning and a few jobs.

Maintenance news:

On the dry and sunny day, the crane and anchor winch were treated to some grease and a check over. On the rather wet day, the annual renewal of the drinking water filter was undertaken. This guy filters water to a special galley outlet that we use to make drinks and also to the dishwasher. It was simple enough to spot which was the new filter element during the swap:

They are wildly expensive things but certainly work - they tamed the brown water we had to put into the tank at Kilmelford a few years ago and turned it into something you actually wanted to put in the kettle. It still looked like we were having a shower in a gentle mud solution of course, the other taps are straight from the tank.

On the trip up to Ardfern, the captain noticed that the port side engine room extractor fan was no longer working. They are two feeble little Dayton 240v blowers that, frankly, don't move much air through some long and convoluted ducts. There is no such thing as a quick replacement even if we had a spare on board as the motor casing has been changed and the new units no longer fit into the brackets made in the Nordhavn factory. (See prior blog post for the pain that causes).

So, we just isolated the power supply to the fan to stop it getting hot and causing trouble during future trips - there is one breaker to operate both fans so we cannot turn off just the dead one. Replacement will be a winter job, especially as it involves crawling into the alcove (up high) that it is mounted in and figuring out what would be a suitable future setup.