Oban excursion, then leaving Ardfern for the equally lovely Kerrera

The weather, although nothing like as hot as the south coast, was still lovely. Unfortunately, we were not going to take advantage of it as the crew had a pretty large "floater" in her eye - the one that had a cataract operation last year. That is a warning sign of possibly very bad things so the crew called the biggest optician in Oban to get a same day check.  Specsavers of course. They were a bit process focussed  and rather unhelpful but did offer a late afternoon time slot.

As there are not hundreds of buses to and from Ardfern every day, we got the next one and then just walked into Lekalake Opticians. The exterior was a bit sad, the interior was way better but the service and support from the new owners, Calum and Helen was truly excellent. Most importantly, all was well with the eye after a thorough check. The bus back was the one that collects the kids after school and we were quietly amazed at how well behaved they were compared to some we've encountered down south. A strange day that ended well.

To kind of celebrate, we decided to visit the Galley of Lorne hotel / restaurant for dinner:

It is the only gig on the village and gets VERY varied feedback and is called the Galley of porn by some. However, Princess Anne has her yacht in Ardfern and has been known to eat there so.... We walked from the bus into the hotel reception and rang the bell, wanting to book a table as advised. Only nobody answered the bell. Still nobody. Tried the bell again, same lack of interest. Then a feckless youth wandered through, saw us said he was nothing to do with the place but said he would get someone. We then managed to get booked.

Arriving later on, we were amazed at how well refurbished the interior of the hotel was. The restaurant area was huge, well decorated but pretty empty. Here is a borrowed image:

The food was OK. The waiter (later we found out he was the owner) had a major BO problem going on which somewhat spoiled things. Then we tried to pay to find that his card payment system had gone down, there was a small queue of people in the bar wanting to pay (World Cup football night had dragged them out) and they wanted to see the match.

The malodourous owner was now sweating profusely which really didn't help fix the problem or improve the atmosphere much. He tried different machines, various reboots, bad words and nothing helped. The captain had a look on-line and of course Worldpay were reporting system performance issues..... This didn't help his mood or odour one bit. We did a bank transfer and escaped before we were overcome with the fumes.

Quite an odd evening to round off an odd day really.

Our last day in Ardfern was spent doing some more serious polishing - an area of the superstructure that hadn't been touched for far too long and needed cutting back so the machine polisher was called into service and the captain's back knew all about that, leaning over the boat deck to do the side of it. Still, we managed a little chunk of the huge expanse we have to do if the weather allows. To quote a well known UK supermarket "every little helps". 

The next boat trip was going to be to Kerrera, the lovely little island off Oban. To get there you need to pass through one of the many tidal gates in the area, this one is called the Dorus Mor. Once again, tide timings dictated an earlyish departure. Here is why timing is important:

The Dorus Mòr is a notorious tidal race located off the west coast of Scotland, between the Craignish peninsula and the island of Garbh Reisa. As the tide funnels through this narrow passage, it creates fierce currents, whirlpools, and standing waves that can reach up to 8 knots during spring tides

Yes, as we only do 8.5 knots or so flat out, pushing an 8 knot tide would be entertaining, never mind the whirlpools and standing waves. For non-boating folks, those wavy lines on the chart means just what you would imagine.

Once through that little gate, which we did at pretty much slack water, we had a rather nice trip up the Sound of Luing. Here is the route:

and once again you can see that Vessel Finder kind of lost us for a big chunk of the trip. The dotted line they use to join things up would have been a real nautical challenge:

Nice enough weather:

with Patrick and Kylie on watch as usual:

As we approached Kerrera, this rather serious superyacht was anchored off the island with an amazingly noisy generator running:

They certainly didn't need the aircon so we did wonder why such a big and noisy genset was in operation! We'd been told that we were going onto the water taxi berth so we headed around the pontoons and saw that it looked pretty full. Gill, the owner of the place came rushing down, called over to us and redirected us to a finger berth on the other side of the marina. She then sprinted over to help with the lines. Quite some service.

We had to back in, between the pontoon and a large yacht with the wind wanting us to snuggle up to the yacht. The yacht's owners had dashed out when Gill arrived and told them that they had a neighbour coming. Then they saw the neighbour was a lardy Nordhavn and were even more worried. There wasn't too much spare space as you can see:

but all went rather well to the relief of our neighbours who later told us about the damage they'd had from visiting craft in the past. Gill helped with the forward line, commented on how well the boat turns and said "that wasn't your first rodeo". Yes, they do handle well, the stern thruster wasn't needed.

We'd arrived just before noon so in the afternoon we had a little walk through the island, checking out the local farm's honesty shop and enjoying the views:

A pity it was overcast, you don't get to see the real beauty of the hills and the many colours:

It was strange that in a nice wet place like the west coast of Scotland, the Kererra folks need to invest in their own water supply:

Folks rely on their own springs or boreholes and have to take responsibility for the purification plant too. Proper off-grid living. 

Whilst on Kerrera, we took the water taxi over to Oban to do some shopping in the big supermarkets - not many more of those as you head further north.  Hudson, the bernadoodle was so cute:

and amused / detained us for a while. 

We also had a lunch in the Waypoint restaurant at the marina, run by Tim and Gill who  own the marina and also have a farm on the island so the ingredients are usually pretty fresh. As you can see from the specials board, they change quite regularly:

On our last Kerrera island day, we had some visitors. Helen, the optician who kindly checked the crew's eyeball last week, came over with Calum her other half and their daughter. Tea, coffee, chat and a guided tour of the boat followed. The 3 year old was very busy with the profusion of cuddly toys we have inherited on board and was most content. We all took the ferry across to Oban later, we wanted to raid the supermarkets before we moved on to the land of small Co-op shops at best. Helen and Calum probably just wanted to escape us.

Carradale bay to Gigha and Ardfern

We had a stupid 2:35am alarm set and weighed the anchor around 3am (only a little weed came up with it luckily) As it was the longest day of the year, it didn't stay dark for long though. The longest day and being further north really helps. We only needed / used the FLIR for around 40 minutes before we could spot things by eyeball.  Our departure timing was dictated by the tides around the Mull of Kintyre. We wanted to round it just as the tide was turning in our favour but before it really picked up and made for a very bumpy ride.

The original, hatched whilst in Tarbert plan, was to anchor off Gigha, spend a day or so there and then probably carry on heading north to Ardfern which is one of our favourite spots. Sometimes plans change as you will see from this Marine Traffic track:

The little "kink" in the route as we head north, up the western side of Kintyre was indeed us anchoring off Gigha. Briefly though, more on that later.

Just out of interest, the Vessel finder system kind of lost us. It shows the route from Tarbert to Carradale, then around the Mull, the stop off Gigha and then shows us in limbo saying that the last information received was over 7 hours old. Again you see how the coverage by Marine Traffic is better even if their new app is pretty dire:

Luckily the Toddlers use Marine Traffic so when stalking us, they didn't have to worry that we were stopped in an inappropriate place or just plain lost or sunk.

It was a lovely calm and quiet early morning run down to the Mull, a couple of yachts came out from Campbeltown and followed us but that was about it. We took an nice inshore route and got plenty of tidal help as we approached the south western corner of the Mull, before turning north:

10.7 knots over the ground when we were only doing 6.4 through the water was good - free diesel really. That "corner" of the Mull was suitably bumpy as the tide had a little squabble with the rapidly changing sea bed profile. We threw a bit of spray around, went through it and headed north, still with tidal help, towards Gigha. The sun was out, the winds were light and all was good:

Except for the weather forecast. Originally there were going to be nice westerly or SWly winds, meaning we would be nicely sheltered tucked in on the eastern side of Gigha. That morning the forecast changed significantly to a direction that is about the worst possible for that anchorage. We were going to be in for a very disturbed night which after the 2:35am alarm was not tempting at all. We arrived off Gigha around 9am and decided to see if there would be space in Ardfern, at the marina, for us. We called them, were told that they would check and call back. Meanwhile we anchored, shut down the navigation kit and chilled a little enjoying the glorious day.

Ardfern called back, said they had space so we fired the boat up again and headed further north. Fortunately there was still some fair tide to help us. The only downside was that despite the sunny day, it was too cold on the flybridge since the sun was being shielded by the bimini cover and the wind was still a bit keen.  All the same, the run up to Ardfern was lovely.

We berthed quite neatly, although we say it ourselves, so the audience had nothing to enjoy. We, on the other hand, enjoyed the view from the flybridge although we were pretty tired after the early start and 12 hours on the move:

A calm and sunny evening followed, with some impressive reflections of the yachts:

and the hills and breakwater area:

We slept rather well that night. Very well in fact.

The following day we  started by launching the RIB which had been very ignored since Penarth. The Yamaha started and then cut out, refusing to re-start. Er?? There was some fuel stain on the water too so the hood came off and we found a loose fuel filter. Tighten it and all was well. This was quite spooky. We had exactly the same problem in Ardfern back in 2013 when during a nice run up the loch, the motor just cut out. An Ardfern curse of sorts? Very odd indeed. The filter assembly has a plastic body with a strange shape that no normal spanner will tighten. As it is plastic you have to be very gentle with it anyway:

 

Once the engine was happy again, we had a serious hooligan burn down the loch to the nearby lagoon which is used by the local folks for moorings. The engine behaved perfectly, the first proper hard run since Portland last year.

After that excitement we dug out the bikes and headed down the peninsular to Craignish point:

A pretty quiet single track road and one long part of it was billiard table smooth - fewer potholes than on the M4. You end up at a little track leading down to on old quay:

Which opens out into quite a view over the islands of Scarba and Lunga plus a peek at the infamous Corryvreckan, the huge scary whirlpool area:

It was just lovely. As was a stop at the new version of Lucy's. Lucy's was a rather good coffee and food spot in a nice new building in the village that had a great following. For some odd reason she has decamped to Arisaig but the folks who ran the rather tired local shop have taken over and the transformation was a good one. We forced ourselves to stop off and test the place out on the way back.

After so much fun, an afternoon of boat polishing was in order. Just had to be done. 

Maintenance news:

The main engine was treated to around half a litre of oil. We try hard not to overfill it after an oil change as the angle it is installed at means the dipstick markings are underreading the actual amount in the sump. The time had come though to treat the engine to a little more lube. Apart from that, all was well mechanically.

One annoyance was that the manual Edson bilge pump that we'd rebuilt 4 years ago was showing signs of leakage again. The stupid thing is aluminium - just ideal for having seawater sitting in it long term.  Nordhavn tend to fit good quality equipment, how that thing was used is beyond us. It will need to be stripped down again soon to see just how sickly it is. We fear that we know the answer though - and a new bronze Edson pump is way too much money for what it basically is. We will see how this plays out. Probably very expensively.