A green nuclear power station perhaps?
The plan was to hole up in Kip Marina for a couple of days as biblical rain and gale force wind were promised. They were right - after all, it is only the start of August. Still, it was a good prompt to give the interior of the boat a good clean and to tidy away all those things that magically migrate out of their storage places and never seem to return to them. Once the heavens stopped opening, we even managed a little more polishing and the captain visited a nearby dentist to check out a slightly unhappy tooth. The diagnosis was, of course, a filling.
We'd arranged for the toddlers (you've met them in here before) to come for a few days cruising around the area and so we bravely got up at stupid o'clock to get the train and bus to Glasgow airport and meet them. The rental car that was booked for 9am didn't materialise until an hour later so lots of hanging around in a very busy (overcrowded perhaps? ) airport waiting for Europcar to get their act together. Not impressed, lots of other non impressed customers were also hanging around waiting for their cars. The rest of the day was windy and a little wet. Welcome to this wonderful Scottish summer....
A couple of lovely trips followed though. Firstly, down to the delightful anchorage in Carradale Bay via Lochranza (Isle of Arran) albeit in typically gloomy weather. Once again the depth of the water close to the islands caused some fun. This time because the shallow water alarm went off on the B&G instruments:
No water under the keel is something to get a little concerned about of course but the trusty Furuno kit was reassuring once more:
The B ad G stuff just doesn't handle deeper water very well as we've seen before. Although you know this, having the alarm go off is still one of "those" moments.
Arriving at Carradale and after anchoring in about 7 metres of water, the sun came out (yes, SUN!) and the day seemed to be looking up:
with interesting evening colours too:
That was all very pleasant until the genset stopped of its own accord mid way through cooking dinner.
The diagnosis was easy - a very blocked raw water filter. Looked like lots of kelp in it (when we anchored near here before we dragged up huge amounts of kelp with the anchor so not surprised). When the captain went to fish it out, he found a slimy red / white mess inside the filter, not kelp and it kind of stung and stank too:
Looked like the remains of a jellyfish.... So, a very happy hour or so was spent cleaning out the filter, replacing the raw water pump impeller which had run dry for a while, restarting the genset, sucking in more goo, cleaning out the filter again and finally finishing off the cooking. Late dinner, happy genset, sore hand for the captain (the gloves seen above only came out after discovering that it wasn't seaweed and that it stung....)
The next morning, (in the Sun again - wow) we spotted several jellyfish around us and identified them as the delightful Lions Mane.
The Internet said that their stings are not fatal. So much for the wisdom of the Internet - the jellyfish killed our generator. Lesson learned, all that looks like kelp inside the water filter might not be so. Use gloves in future.
Carradale to Campbeltown was a first this year - a full trip spent on the Flybridge for all the crew. Amazing. Sun, very little wind, nice views, acceptable temperature. there was plenty of space on the town mooring when we arrived too. We just remembered why we like cruising in Scotland again.
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Thanks for your ideas / cheek / corrections / whatever! They should hit the blog shortly after the system checks them to make sure they will not put us or you in jail.....