Dinghy ashore to see if we could use the "wrong buoy" for another night and found a real timewarp boatyard which reminded the captain of the mid 1970's Norfolk Broads hirefleet yards. Just a much nicer setting though:
Lovely welcome from a lady who came from Ilkley. She told us that the area south of Oban was an English ghetto. Worrying. The local hotel / pub is run by people from York and..... The marina owner wandered in and had a chat. Probably 80 years old and just lovely. He called ours "the chunky boat" and liked having a proper oceangoer on his moorings.
The office is a collection of furniture and "stuff" from lord knows where. The lovely lady apologised that "we are in the dark ages and don't take credit cards yet". Alongside was a workshop doing some very high quality spray work on some nice yachts though. A little different to the south coast marina where invoicing is high tech and the boat repairs are done by cowboys at high hourly rates. Not sure they could lift our 40 tons with this superannuated kit though...
Possibly good god fearing folk too - there is a sign saying that no diesel will be served on Sundays. Their storage tank would just about fill one of our 2 main tanks...
The walk into the village to support the couple from York for lunch was good, as was the food. The lochside walk to Melfort and back was needed, to make space for afternoon tea and cake (bad news, no carrot cake on offer but excellent cinnamon scones) in the local shop / cafe.
We are a little worried that the locals are really pygmies though. Either that or they are very friendly when they go on holiday:
On our buoy, we don't feel hemmed in at all:
Very international spot for a tiny village in Scotland. Last night a Finnish boat arrived and there is a genuine Japanese yacht with genuine Japanese people on board nearby. Guess they are not on a 2 week vacation!
The only downside was coming back on board and trying to wash off the black streaks from the rain (yes you down south types, it rained here on Monday evening). There must have been something very nasty in that rain - the streaks would not come off even our nice recently polished bits. Serious cleaning stuff came out of the cupboard and the evening saw the captain sorting out the streaky hull from the little dinghy. See, life afloat is just so relaxing!
And finally - you may have seen that Amanda suggested that the Emu isn't Shelia but Shane. This might make Patrick (whose gender was fixed earlier by his Grandmother) a gay penguin of course. Now, to stop such appalling rumours from spreading, here is proof that the Emu really is a Shelia and designed in Australia:
OK Amanda?
OK Shelia or Sheila would indeed appear to have had her gender fixed now too.......thanks for chicking that one out ;-)
ReplyDeleteNo diesel served on Sundays = God fearing folk. Not sure about that - maybe Saturday nights 'on the toon' are still massive there and Sunday is a write-off? You could let us know.....
and guess what - we will not be here on Saturday night to "check out" how wild the locals become. See the next post....
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