Craobh to Kerrera

As you would expect, the wind decided to wake up a little for our departure from Croabh. After saying hi and bye to the lovely Sue in the office, we backed out of our large berth and did a slalom between the buoys handily placed astern of us just to make life difficult. It was a gloomy day with some mist / cloud hanging over the hills:

Our route to the island of Kerrera takes us up the Sound of Luing and then out of the shelter of the island chain so you get properly exposed to the prevailing SW winds and whatever waves they have dragged up across the Atlantic:

Here is how it looks on a Google map, so you can see that Kerrera  (red pin on it) really is an island:

Life on the island of Scarba must be lonely, here is the one house that we spotted:

It is privately owned and quoted to be "not permanently inhabited".  Can quite see why. The wind, that was freshening nicely, peaked as we headed up the Sound of Lunig:

32.3 knots is about 37 mph or a force 7 near gale once more. We were nicely sheltered by the island though and we had timed our trip to not have wind over tide so it wasn't rough at all. The weather continued to delight us, rain showers and squalls made the photo opportunities rather limited. Still heading between the tiny island of Fladda and the rocky outcrop alongside it we did manage two pictures for the lighthouse collection. This shows you how the nautical chart sees them:

and this poor picture is the lighthouse on Fladda. Poor because it was taken through the windows of the pilothouse to avoid the rain:

This is the rather boring light tower on the other side of the passage, again through glass:

Out of the shelter of the islands we needed the stabilisers on as the SW wind induced waves picked up. Nothing dramatic though. Passing Easdale (used to be a huge slate quarry area) the rain stopped, the clouds tried to look less threatening and we got better views of the village and island:

Kerrera has a litte lighthouse on the eastern side to warm folks off this rocky outcrop. Again, an uninspired construction in a beautiful setting:

Approaching Kerrera marina we gave the main engine a hard run to clear out the exhaust and cylinders. This give you an idea of why we would not try to cruise at speeds well above the hull speed of the boat. We were doing around 8.6 knots through the water for this wild fuel burn, compared to around 7.8 litres / hour at 6.3 knots during our 1450rpm trip up here:

For the real propeller heads, full throttle rpm is 2400, we cannot reach that at the momen, more like 2350 rpm t as we have a very heavily laden boat until we burn off more fuel. 

Kerrera looked a bit "black" thanks to the weather as we approached the marina area:

and here is how it looks from the land, with Oban in the background. Easier to spot the Nordhavn this time:

Now, the little marina come boatyard on Kerrera has been through a few owners with varying degrees of success so far. The island has only a passenger ferry so anything big / heavy has to come over on a specially arranged landing craft type of cargo boat. Imagine the costs of that. The marina had issues getting fuel over and water supply in the summers. So, we thnk that it has been very lucky to get two enthusiastic new owners who live on a farm on the island and really are making serious improvements to the place. We'd heard that the on site restuarant was very good now and so it was. Food from the farm, beautifully cooked, ultra friendly owners and staff. They fully deserve to succeed. Have a look at Kerrera website.

We wandered to the local farm shop which is unmanned, where you pick what you want, write it in a book and either leave the money or make a BACS transfer. Different world and rather a nice one.