Salen to Tobermory and Loch Aline

Quite a start to the morning; sunny, calm, tranquil, beautiful. So, we decided to leave it all and head off after a very enjoyable week in Salen. After saying "bye" to the folks there and paying a very reasonable sum for our berth, we headed down the lovely Loch Sunart enjoying the views from the flybridge. We still don't get the "Victorian engraving" analogy in the pilot book though.

Here is an example of one of the newer houses along the loch shore. There are only a few so they don't spoil the remote feeling at all:

A little further down the loch, you also get a more classical building, Glenborrodale Castle, hidden in the trees:

Approaching the Kilchoan area and then for the short crossing of the Sound of Mull, the wind picked up and so we had to retire inside. Well, we didn't have to, it wasn't that bad but we are pretty soft really. No idea how we would manage on a yacht. Our liner curse seemed to have materialised again, anchored off Tobermory was Europa 2:

Not quite as ugly as some of the others that we have seen! We pottered into the bay and found one of the big (80 ton) mooring buoys was free so the crew expertly picked up the heavy strop, much to the disappointment of the crew of a Canadian yacht just ahead of us who clearly thought that we were going to cause some amusement. Before we had covered up the instruments and seat on the flybridge, a large Oyster yacht arrived and circled us, looking all hopeful / intimidating. We think that he tried to will us to be leaving but it didn't work. Over lunch we then watched him try to anchor close to us and fail 3 times. He then repeated the exercise at the end of the bay 3 times, gave up and went onto the pontoons instead. There was a kind of smug "that could have been us but for 2 minutes" feeling about in the boat.

The little Avon roll-up dinghy had a trip out for some shopping and a walk towards the little lighthouse that we pictured on here before. Of course, we had to negotiate the pontoon walkway and the returning cruise liner passengers heading for their boat transfers. They clearly thought they had bought the pontoon from the way they occupied it (and the town).  We had bumped into the Colvic motorsailer folks from Lady Clair ashore and so wandered along the muddy path with them. Getting to be quite a sociable spot here. Interestingly, the lady at the check-out in the little Co-op store was also appalled by the cruise liner folks' attitude - we never figured out why they would be visiting a food shop though with the cornucopia of calories available on board.

The next morning, after a quick bakery trip, we headed along the Sound of Mull and into Loch Aline. No pictures as it was wet and grey. Arriving we had a welcoming party to help with our lines - the Beneteau trawler yacht folks from Orkney, whom we had met in Salen. See, sociable!

Of course, the evening became wet again. The view out of the pilothouse was a little bit soggy:

So much so that Patrick, who had been on lookout all day, decided that looking at us was more interesting than the view outside:

He is one seriously screwed up penguin.