Holy Loch to Tarbert then powerless

The forecast was good, the winds were light, the sun was due to make an appearance and the scenery around the Kyles of Bute was worth another look. So, we opted to head for another night in Tarbert before going further south. The option of anchoring off Mull was discarded as the forecast for the following day would mean being trapped on board.

We set off enjoying watching a sailing school boat doing circuits and bumps against the breakwater. The whole process seemed very intense and involved. We must try to be more serious and professional in future too. Casually casting the lines off and backing away from the breakwater seemed to lack a little drama in comparison and the skipper of the yacht was issuing way more commands than we ever manage. Time to sharpen up we think!

A flybridge run through the Kyles with some sun was lovely. Just lovely. Nothing else to add really, such a special area. Little cute lighthouses:

and impressive vistas:

The narrow channel around the top of Bute was negotiated:

and the run up Loch Fyne still amazes us with the depth so close to the shores:

Sorry for the messy picture - 150 metres under the keel and it topped out at 165. You can see that we were pretty close to the shore too from the plotter picture above.

As we arrived in Tarbert, we waved to a new contact, a man who lives in the harbour entrance area and who took some great pictures of us the last time we entered. Here is an example:

We are hoping for a few more as it is rare to get a picture when we are underway.

The nice harbour folks had arranged a hammerhead berth for us so mooring was simple enough. The harbourmaster's wife was looking after things in the office and we had an excellent welcome there too. Kind of like this place. Sadly, things went a bit south when we cooked dinner. Let's move on to

Maintenance news:

We mentioned how the inverters had thrown their toys out of the pram whilst in Portavadie. Well, they decided to do the same in Tarbert when the microwave was used. Not a high current drain compared to the dishwasher or a kettle which both run through the inverters so it seems to be a bit random. The story went something like:

• Inverter throws a wobbly, takes power from batteries when it should have plenty from the shore, flips to and from doing this, warning lights flash on for overload and voltage and everything under the sun. Inverters were only providing around 6 amps for the microwave at the time and should have been simply transferring this direct from the incoming supply.

• Restart them, works for a while then they throw another wobbly

• Cold restart - the Nordhavn folks fit a big switch that lets you connect the shorepower or genset power directly to the things that are normally fed by the inverters in case they go wrong. Inverters fully off. Power distributed OK. Batteries charged by our separate battery charger not the inverters for a while.

• Removed covers from inverters, checked all connections as you can't do much more. One 24v battery connection tightened a bit.  No picture of a naked inverter for the techno geeks this time as we were too busy trying to fix things to worry about the camera.

• Turned power back through the inverters. Dead as a dodo. Nowt, nothing. Would not fire up or even recognise mains power being fed to them. Tried the bypass switch a few times in case it was playing up. Still the same. Not a good moment. Switched shore power back directly to the panel as getting late, retired hurt. 

• The next morning, panel off the inverters again, nothing obvious, checked that there was power to them from the bypass switch and, for some reason, they both fired up but the remote control panel was dead. Inverters worked perfectly, charging the batteries and powering the sockets etc. Guessed that the remote panel was causing trouble - removed it, remade connections at the panel and the inverter, the remote panel fires up and the inverters have behaved since including a test with heavy use of the dishwasher. Has the problem been fixed? Not sure. Is there any more we can do? Probably not. We did contact Victron though and got the details of their Glasgow service agent in case. Time will tell......