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.