Tarbert and Portavadie - being social

Whilst in Portavadie, we met up with Robert and Deborah, the folks who have the slightly larger Nauticat than Stephen and Alison. No bragging rights though, they are not like that.

Robert is a founder member of a sloe gin club and so tested the brew that Anne had made in a most serious manner:

Could be that he made it all up of course, just to get a little more of the stuff.

We went for a wander around the lochside and just enjoyed the views:

At the end of the road, there is a cute little bay with a few houses dotted around it:

and more than a few midges so our walk back was a little faster...... On the way we found another little winter boat project:

The poor thing has been sitting there looking sad for at least 4 years. Shows that either the locals are very law abiding or they know that the engine is seized up and beyond rescuing hence not worth nicking. Not tempted to take on a restoration project though, we have enough boat to look after:

We then made the huge trip across to Portavadie; the strange half empty marina and very up-market (ie very expensive) apartments and chalets in the old oil platform building yard that never actually built a thing. We've told you about this before but have a look at Wikipedia.

The large visitor area was totally empty. They still like charging high visitor berthing rates though. And you have to buy electricity cards. We checked out the pool area but the crew objected to being charged the full visitor rate for a swim even though we were berthed in the marina. Oh, and the fee was £12. Kind of high. So, they didn't get any more money from us - until we walked into the shop that sells basic provisions and wildly expensive clothes. They had a discounted ladies Musto jacket.....

During the evening, we were visited by Sheila and Niall, the folks that we bumped into at the Tobermory Highland games last year:

They seem to have got the hang of  Nordhavn life rather quickly.

We also enjoyed an evening ashore in their house with stunning views across the loch, being royally fed and entertained. Tough life this boating.

Maintenance news:

The little bulkhead light that the crew uses started to play up - sometimes it would switch on , sometimes not. This resulted in earache for the captain who finally took it to pieces and soldered the wires across the other pair of terminals on the switch which were not worn:

Don't you love simple fixes!