Loch Aline to Tobermory and pottering around

As delightful as Loch Aline is, the time had come to move on. We saw a really grim weekend forecast ahead with biblical levels of rain and some pretty windy stuff too. So, we opted to have a little trip (13 nautical miles or so) through the sound of Mull to Tobermory where there is a bit more for rainy days. Including, major excitement in these parts, a little Co-op store. 

Naturally, the tide times meant we would be pushing the current all the way if we left before low water, which takes a lot of the stress out of exiting the harbour. So, to protect our stress levels, we burned a bit more fuel and headed off with a wild 2 metres under the keel. That of course meant a slower trip:

The 118 metres depth is just outside the harbour entrance, way nicer than the 2 metres as you go through the narrows and way way nicer than the 0.9 we had on the way in. The conditions continued to be grey and less than tempting for a flybridge trip as you can see:

There was a surprising number of yachts out and about, it almost felt busy for Scotland and we actually had to alter course to avoid one. Most unusual. Then we thought of the Solent area and realised how, even in the busy areas, it is pretty empty here.

The short and easy route along the Sound of Mull:

As we were in for a very wet weekend, we wanted to get a walk ashore spot, not a buoy or anchorage. A good thing as the anchorage was already rather full, one little cruise liner the MS Hamburg was in place and hogging the anchorage area. We were given a nice hammerhead berth, close to a rather enormous Fleming 78. We looked most insignificant (actually we like that) although the guys on a rather nice sailing yacht next to us commented on what a great boat the Nordhavn is. The "go slow and don't drain an oil well" thing appeals to many sailing folks, especially those getting bored with being soaked / freezing cold in their cockpits when underway. 

There was a serious looking fishing boat conversion nearby:

The odd looking contraption that looks like a rocket launcher at the stern intrigued us. We know that the Royal Navy is a bit short of warships but an old MFV seemed like desperation. Finally we discovered that the impressive and substantial structure was holding a couple of solar panels that could be rotated to face the sun in all directions. Very impressive bit of engineering. We hope the power they generate outweighs the cost of the setup which must have been significant.

Here is the liner that was occupying the harbour and disgorging passengers into the very small main street of Tobermory so they could block up the pavements, look miserable and generally behave as liner passengers seem to do when ashore:

MS Hamburg holds 420 passengers and it felt as though they were all ashore. Luckily she headed off that evening. Hopefully the bridge crew were being more careful than in 2015 when she hit a charted rock in the Sound of Mull. Whoops. 

To escape the masses, we climbed the rather ludicrous incline / north face of the Eiger that leads up to An Tobar, the locals arts centre and cafe. The cafe bit had gone from excellent to average to grim and had just been through another incarnation so it had to be checked out. We are delighted to report that it is back to excellent, especially the pistachio and rose cake. There were some interesting artworks there, we kind of liked this cartoon like representation of a Cal Mac ferry:

but resisted buying anything. The views from up on the hill overlooking that bay are lovely, even if there is a lump of painted steel in the middle of it:

and the best bit is that 99.9% of cruise liner passengers never venture up the hill. It was a tranquil and very welcome haven.

During our stay we, of course, raided the Co-op for some basics, walked around the harbour area a few times and once up the main road (another evil hill) to Island Blue, an arts and crafts place:

Why would you paint a building housing a business called "Island Blue" that (griping) shade of pink? It is run by a couple and the lady is from Thailand. They do some authentic Thai style little lunches and take away options too. We resisted. The lady is lovely, very friendly and happily chatted about life in her home country which brought back happy memories of work visits there for the captain. 

We knew that we were in for a very very wet Sunday. The forecast was unfortunately spot on and it just kept on raining.  Into Monday morning as well:

We didn't even venture off the boat.  It reminded us of visiting here with Andrew and Linda on board when we had three solid days of rain. We hoped not to repeat that treat. However, the fates had a different opinion.

After a day of incessant rain, we had hoped for a better start to the following one. Only this pitched up and anchored off the harbour:

More liner passenger pollution ensued but as it continued to rain all morning, we avoided them until the afternoon when we had to revisit An Tobar and also went into the An Camus fused glass workshop. A fascinating chat with the owner who had moved to the island and was talking about the challenges of life there and bringing up two children when the facilities for them out of school are very very limited. Laura the owner bought the business and self taught the fused glass techniques. Impressive.

The harbour had a most unusual number of serious cruising motorboats visiting. Very rare to see such a mix together. When we arrived, there was a humongous Fleming in situ, B 4 Bliss. To get a nice image, we've taken these from MarineTraffic:

Then a USA registered Selene trawler Yacht arrived, Hookipa 

with tinted windows in the pilothouse? Less than ideal we thought. This arrival was followed by a Turkish built steel explorer, Mrs Robinson (all 25 metres of her):

Very unusual to see so many serious passage making motor boats in one location in the UK. There were very few fast motor boats about. We are finding that the planing motor cruisers, who like a good drink when going fast, are mainly travelling more slowly now anyway which isn't good for their large diesel engines or comfort of their crew. Fuel prices are beginning to hurt maybe? 

Our final wander around the village, including the compulsory stop at An Tobar the arts and of course coffee place, showed that some of the locals are proud to show Mull as their home island in many ways:

Maintenance news:

That ***** manual bilge pump had to be looked at. It was clearly unhappy with signs of corrosion and a weep from one pipe fitting. So, the lid was lifted off (last overhaul was around 4 years ago) to reveal some nasty corrosion. Some of the mating surfaces for the thick nitrile-like gaskets were badly pitted from corrosion and overall, the pump was in a very poor shape. A nice new one looks like this:

The outside of ours looks a lot like that. The inside - well, that is another story.  This winter it will need a "rip and replace" job.  With the help of a tube of Sikaflex (how could we live without the stuff?) it was sealed up again and its days are numbered. 

Several folks have totally removed the manual pump as in an emergency, it isn't going to help much. We will ponder on the options. One is a new bronze (ie seawater corrosion resistant) version of the same pump. They look prettier:

but when bought in the USA cost $1,573 (no, the comma is not a decimal point). Add in shipping and VAT and import duty for delivery to the UK and you can see why we are hesitant to order one. Wild price indeed.

On a slightly simpler and way cheaper note, the bulb in our Miele electric oven had failed. The captain persuaded it to come out and fully expected to struggle finding a replacement until we reached a bigger town. We should have known though. Browns of Tobermory were established in 1830 and some of the stock might well date back that far. An amazing range of hardware (and alcohol) in one smallish shop. They even stocked the heat resistant bulb needed for the oven, together with really random things like a box full of chalk cubes for billiard / snooker / pool cues. The oven bulb must have been on the shelf for a while as they were a pound cheaper than the best price Mr Amazon could offer!

Kerrera to Loch Aline

After two very windy days, we woke up to a calmer but still grey outlook. It was a slow, late start and we discovered that the shorepower had popped. Checked the breakers on the shore supply - all were fine. Not a problem, we can happily run off the new battery setup for several days despite using an electric kettle, the microwave , fridge / freezer etc.

Later we found that the entire island was dead:

Might be a fairly regular thing for them? It wasn't an issue for us as we slowly prepared the boat for a short trip to Loch Aline, another favourite spot. The usual tidal annoyance was even more important today. The Loch Aline entrance has charted depths as low as 2 metres (plus the tidal height of course). To get a sensible (1 metre clearance in this case) we didn't want to go in at low water. Low water was pretty much the time we would arrive if we left Kerrera at midday and cruised at our normal speed, typical. We had to leave around then anyway, berthing typically runs from 12 am to 12am  and we didn't want to cause the lovely Kerrera folks an issue with an incoming boat.

So, we headed off and had a very slow trip on purpose. No pictures for you as it was grey, gloomy and there were a couple of big showers that killed visibility and even made us fire up the radar. Yup, that bad.  Passing the little island of Lismore, this is how the lighthouse at the end of it appeared:

Not exactly clear was it?

We arrived at Loch Aline a bit too early despite the slow trip. It must be the little bit of exercise that we gave the wing engine that pushed us along too fast! Hardly..... The CalMac ferry that goes across to Mull from Loch Aline has a nice long lunch break and then heads over at 14:15. So, we stooged around waiting for it to depart as the channel is very narrow and it was going to be very shallow so we needed it to be clear. You can see the little loop past the entrance on our track:

We crept in once the ferry had departed (late of course) and had a minimum of 0.9 metres under the keel. Watching the depth sounder plummet from 110 metres just off the entrance to 0.9 is certainly character forming. We popped onto a nice big hammerhead, chatted to some yottie folks who came out to help us and then retreated inside to avoid the persistent drizzle. Not one of the nicest day trips we've had. Calm, nice area but rubbish weather.

The harbour folks here are just lovely, nice local community run facility and they seem to add new things and ideas each year. They so deserve to do well.

The forecast for the two following days was not great. We were in for a very windy spell:

Please can you explain how the met office forecast shows light winds as a summary then 40 plus mph wind gusts??? The inshore waters forecast was way more realistic:

In preparation,  we took off the bimini cover to save it getting a flogging and to reduce the noises it and the supporting bars make. Amazingly, this was the first time since leaving Penarth we'd had to hide it away.

Before the wind picked up, we went for a wander into the village and down to the entrance of the loch. The Sound of Mull was looking mean and moody:

whereas the crew just looked ready for both sun and rain - very much a Scottish summer thing:

In the village we inspected the rather good range of products on sale in the local shop and then went big. The Whitehouse restaurant (NB it is a Trump free zone) had a very good reputation, expensive evening meals and we'd been told that it was worth a visit by several folks. Realistically, it has to be good to survive in the middle of nowhere and to attract enough folks from far and wide. Bear in mind that the drive from the Village to the nearest town with large supermarkets and a sensible population takes an hour and that includes a ferry crossing:

An hour underway and then you get to the rather sad Fort William too - not one of the best towns in the Highlands really. 

Back to the White House restaurant topic. We'd booked but there was no need. We were the only lunch time diners. Food? It was superb. Look at weblink for an idea of the menu etc. Happy to report that the duck was sublime and the souffle for dessert was on a par with the main course. We also managed to get back to the boat (20 mins or so walk) before the wind and rain kicked off too. Happy folks despite the weather.

These intrepid rowers arrived in the pouring rain just as the wind picked up too and left in nicer conditions the next morning:

We did wonder where they slept and if they'd had a shower / wash. Fortunately they were far enough away and downwind of us so we could not tell.

The following day we waited for the rain to stop and the wind to calm down a bit before walking into the village again, then back the other way to the head of the loch. You could tell that it has rained a teeny bit by the waterfall running down the hills to the loch:

and again by this video of water flowing under the little bridge that leads to the Ardtornish estate:

The estate has opened up a café there which we felt obliged to test out after the walk (around 50 mins from the Harbour office area). Very glad we did, another good stop off spot. Loch Aline is turning into a foodie kind of place for us, must be time to move on before we need new larger clothes. The only disturbance was this coaster who pitched up at slack water early one morning with lots of noise being transmitted through our hull:

He had swung round to face the entrance and then berthed on the sand mine quay. Lots of prop and thruster noise to wake us up. Annoyingly, the following morning we had the same noise, just a bit later as the ship swung around again to face into the loch. No idea why as nothing had been loaded during the day. Neither movement was a good time to have an alarm call.