Tarbert to Carradale

Whilst in Tarbert, we had a visit from the navy. Well, three of the horrid little plastic pretend patrol craft that they take unsuspecting university students out in. They populated the hammerheads in front and behind us:

Mooring, boat cleaning and departing the next morning seemed to involve a horde of people, lots of briefings and lots of shouting. As we mentioned before we need to up our game considerably and make everything more professional. Oh, they also like to start their very smoky engines and run them for ages at idle before leaving. We cannot answer the why question that is probably on your lips right now. Perhaps it is because they don't buy their own fuel or pay for the engine overhauls caused by idling big diesels from cold for ages?

After raiding the Co-op (probably the largest food shop we would see for several days) we departed too. Less ceremony and way less shouting.

The flybridge run down the side of the Isle of Arran was so pretty, warm, sunny, just the best. The three plastic navy craft were messing about (so it seemed) and then passed us. We guessed that they were heading for Campbeltown, as we were. A small visitors' pontoon there might be tight on space. Then we saw the training Ship Jack Petchey following us and their AIS said "Campbeltown" too. The crew rang the harbour chap, they agreed that things would be a bit busy there so we opted to anchor in Carradale Bay instead. A nicer place but 2 hours north from Campbeltown making our planned early start to go around the Mull of Kintyre the next day even earlier. Ho hum.

On the way, we saw a rare beast out of captivity - a Nordhavn 60, Annie M:

Avid readers of this stuff will have seen pictures of her predecessor (a 47 like ours) in Kip marina a few years ago. Owen the owner got the regulation Nordhavn wave and we exchanged pictures afterwards.

The Carradale anchorage was empty. Lovely. As we approached, so a pod of dolphins popped up around the boat - we reckon there were 12 of them but it was hard to keep count as they surfaced, breathed and did the odd tail flap. Beautiful. Our pictures are rubbish as they were taken on the phone camera at the same time as the captain was trying to drop the anchor:

Anyway, you get the idea. This is what the trip looks like to help you orientate yourselves:

 The views from the anchorage are spectacular:

You get to see Arran (the darker hills) and off to the south east but not in these pictures the Ailsa Craig plus the mainland. It was sunny and calm. Happy folks even when a tiny French yacht arrived to share the spot with us:

there is plenty of space for way more than 2 boats!

We settled down, fired up the genset, cooked a lovely dinner and afterwards decided it was coffee time. Then it got interesting again. Heading around the Mull to the anchorage off Gigha is on hold for a while at least.

Maintenance news:

Remember how we said that we would let you know about the misbehaving inverters. Well, they were working perfectly when underway and when we fired up the genset to cook dinner. A little later, when the genset was on again for coffee, they refused to recognise the mains power input from the genny and just stayed in inverter mode. This is a new game and not one that we like much. We didn't tinker with them as we want them to carry on "inverting" from the 24v batteries to keep the fridge / freezer running OK whilst at anchor or underway. Rebooting them might have caused other trouble! So, a while ago they went mad whilst working in bypass mode, then they refused to fire up and now they refuse to recognise incoming mains power.

Nothing more we can do, time to have them looked at or replace them, our trip to Gigha tomorrow and the lovely anchorage there will be postponed whilst we get this sorted out somehow.

Time to get an expert viewpoint, the problem will be in finding an expert - a call to the folks that the Victron man recommended is needed tomorrow morning....