Portavadie, Tarbert and birthday time

After a lovely night at anchor in Asgog Bay, we knew that the weather was going to turn for the worse.  The forecast said that the wind would swing through 180 degrees which would be fun in our anchorage that had been perfectly protected beforehand.  So, we got up and active a little earlier than usual to enjoy a perfectly still and sunny start to the morning.

Never criticise the Met Office -  about 5 minutes before they had forecast it,  the wind duly did a 180 change and built rapidly in speed.  So, we recovered a nicely weedy anchor and made the short trip to Portavadie, just around the corner.  By the time we arrived, the wind was very busy and docking was fun, especially as the free spot needed a reverse in manoeuvre.

After berthing in the rain, it continued to so so for most of the day.  Great.  Portavadie can be explored by looking at Portavadie website.  We mentioned the place a couple of years ago as the white elephant oil rig construction yard that never received an order and finally got converted into a marina.  The village for the workers was never occupied and stands derelict to this day.  So much for regenerating the west of Scotland -  criminal waste of public money....

The following day we pottered over to Tarbert, fast becoming a favourite spot. The same nice hammerhead berth but a very confused man in the office who was filling in for the normal ladies and didn't really know where things were or what to do.  Friendly and helpful within his limitations though!

A walk around the bay revealed some lovely houses with stunning views:

Not sure if you could really live there without getting stir crazy occasionally though.  Going to the Co-op every day is a wild as it gets.... Apparently, the Scottish Tourist Board dishes out 3 stars to pretty much anything these days:

We learned that most of the shellfish landed by the fishermen locally end up in Spain for some strange reason. Here is the truck:

If you look closely you might spot that woolly hat being sported by the lady yet again. Yes, it is August in Scotland...

Friday was a key day -  the captain's birthday.  To celebrate, a running repair was made to the wiper arms -  the starboard side one had become detached from the spindle. Well, not strictly true. The wipers are pantograph devices and the driven part of the arm was still attached OK. However, the part that is meant to just act as a trailing arm had pushed off the fitting.  Some thought, sandpaper, copper grease and a hammer (!) sorted that out.

Of course, one job always leads to another -  realigning the water jets and clearing out the blocked ones.  We don't use them much,  we rarely get spray over the screen thanks to the high bow and the fact that we don't try to go out in gales too often.

After all this exertion,  we walked across to West Loch Tarbert to try out the West Loch hotel that had been booked for a Sunday lunch visit a while ago but then cancelled as it was a bit of a walk in the wet:

Luckily,  the dry stuff and sun was booked for the birthday boy and we can thoroughly recommend the hotel as a place to eat. Venison pie crammed with meat:

(By the way, the glasses of red wine were not ours of course.) The crew had the most disgusting chocolate assiette of desserts you have ever seen or attempted to eat:

She managed it though.....

We walked (or should that be waddled?)  to the West Loch pier to admire the fishing boats.  Some were in better condition that others:

One even had an engine left inside but it looked a little too far gone for reconditioning:

We staggered back to Tarbert and didn't do much else frankly! Wonder why.

Bute to Asgog Bay (one of those died and gone to heaven spots)

We wriggled ourselves out of Port Bannatyne despite the best efforts of the wind to keep us pinned against the pontoon / other boats. The lovely views around the Kyles of Bute were a little muted as there was some cloud about (way better than rain of course so not an issue!)

The little ferry at Colintrave - for the first time - didn't head off and force us to alter course. It stayed snuggled up to the Bute slipway:

Must be the most expensive ferry crossing going. The trip is timetabled for a whole 5 minute crossing but costs £10.05 for a car (you pay for the driver and passengers too of course). Wonder what will happen when "road equivalent" pricing starts on that route later this year.

Just past the ferry are the nice narrows. This gives you a reasonable idea of the gap - no space for two fat boats to pass in safety when the tide is going across the channel:

We were all on our own so no pressure at all. Heading down the west Kyle towards Tighnabruaich was pretty good as the sun was busy with nice views aft too:

Linda continued her photographic tour of Scotland, capturing images of the village and the local bank (perhaps for Patrick, remember that he attempted a bank robbery here two years ago):

As you can see, a woolly hat is a must have accessory in Scotland this summer for some folks.
  
We wanted to stop off the town but more and more of the area is getting filled up with mooring buoys. Of course, the visitor buoys only want boats up to about 15 tons so we need to anchor. The problem is that there is so little space to do so near to the rapidly shelving shoreline. We tried the one "possible" spot between two buoys, found that it wasn't good holding and so gave up and carried on.

We ended up very glad that we did so, as we anchored in Asgog Bay near Portavadie. It was calm enough to sit on the flybridge with an early evening libation, whist drinking in the views of the Isle of Arran astern, the Kintyre peninsular and the mainland whilst in a lovely bay:

One of those anchorages that is only suitable in offshore light winds, which turn into little chunks of memory heaven.


Maintenance news:

Having Andrew on board, we were desperate to find some maintenance that needed doing. Well - result! When Roland replaced the vibration damper on the front of the engine, he had rebuilt the engine alternator covers exactly as you would expect to do. What he didn't know, and the captain had forgotten to mention of course) was that one needs to be spaced out a little to stop it chafing gently on the alternator pulley when the engine is at idle and vibrates more.

Of course, doing that means getting very grubby as there is plenty of black belt dust to get all over your hand but it isn't an especially hard job.