Doing stuff in and around Mallaig

It is nice to be in a proper working fishing port. OK, the seagulls get a little annoying but having so many trawlers around feels kind of real. Here is the evening view from our aft cockpit:

The only downside is one local pub where all the trawler crews seem to congregate. Walking past on the pavement you learn lots of words (albeit quickly spoken in thick accents making some harder to take in) and do an obscene amount of secondary smoking too.

Having a few days to play with here, we decided upon some kind of action plan - a rare move for us. The first thing was to do the train trip to Fort William. OK, Fort William is a bit grim / touristy but the train ride is stunning - ranked as one of the best in the world and we saw why. The Glenfinnan viaduct, with its very low speed limit for the train, is amazing:

Here is how it looks on approach from an antique diesel multiple unit through the grubby windows, via an antique mobile phone camera:

Doesn't really do it justice.

The scenery along the way is just breathtaking, even from the antique diesel multiple unit etc etc:

In fort William, the crew made a major discovery. This little notice in the window of a typical tourist trap art and craft shop:

So, she had to check it out. For Patrick's sake of course. What we found was hardly a "corner". Apparently the owners think they run the largest specialist penguin retail operation in the world (there might be one close competitor in the USA) with a huge stock of "everything penguin". Have a look at Penguin Corner website and be amazed, horrified, seduced, whatever. The crew brought back a penguin scarf (in the lovely weather we currently have, it is destined for a drawer of course) and a penguin rucksack which the captain will certainly not be using. Worse than a trolley shopper.

Most horrifying was that they were selling copies of Patrick. He has received no royalties or requests to use his noble profile in a soft toy. We are not brave enough to tell him about this "identity theft" of course.

What else - well, we went mad and polished the port side of the hull, which of course means moving the boat around and berthing on the "wrong" non walkway side. That feels very strange, having to walk off the boat via the bathing platform.

Maintenance:

Brian, the TRAC stabiliser expert man, came and had a look at the starboard fin which was not centering properly again. It would sometimes centre, allowing the fixing pin to be put in place as normal. Sometimes it parked slightly out of position, giving an "interference fit" with the pin and sometimes it would just stop the pin from being fitted entirely until the hydraulic pressure was off and you could move the fin manually a little. It was only a few degrees but enough to be a nuisance / portent of future trouble.

Working on the "belt and braces" approach as we are in remote areas now, he replaced the new servo valve (in case), the dump valve (in case) and the little sensor thingy that measures the position of the fin too. He also stripped down the top fittings (the Yoke) just to make sure there was no excessive wear since the overhaul a couple of years ago - and there was not.

So, with pretty much an entire new set of control gear on that fin, it parked quite happily again on test. We just don't know what was causing the problem. So glad that was a warranty visit though! The backup from Golden Arrow on the TRAC kit has been good since day 1 and this re-enforced our view that for very specialist kit, you should use the specialists.