Enjoying Kerrera some more

During the rather unpleasant weather that you saw forecast in the last post, Hebridean Princess, the scarily expensive little cruise ship, came and anchored astern of us:

To prove just how delightful the weather was, this is the ship through one of our windows:

Luckily the rain stopped for a while, although the near gales just kept on going. We took the ferry over to Oban and wandered along the promenade, avoiding the coach tour hordes who seem to have lost the ability to walk anywhere bar to a shop / cafe / pub / restaurant. The bay is lovely - Kerrera is in the background and you can just see the boats moored there too:

Some black guillemots were sitting on the sea wall watching the water most intently, probably for lunch:

They were amazingly tame, we could walk past them and they stayed glued to their task. A good walk around the town followed, more food shopping (on the basis that reasonably sized supermarkets will become a distant memory soon) and then a return on the little ferry to Kerrera. 

In another brief gap between showers we walked the northern end of the island. This is looking across to Oban:

and this gives you the "bigger picture":

Naturally we were caught in a shower but the views and remoteness made up for it. We heard a loud "leave it" eminating from the track back to the marina. We guessed that a dog was being told to leave a dead rabbit that we'd seen earlier. Sure enough, a man and three working labradors appeared. They were rather well trained and behaved although eating the copious amounts of bunny poo seeemed to be a must. The 2 year old bitch was a particularly good looking dog as you can see:

The three of them travel about on a 35 foot yacht with their owners who reported that daily hoovering was needed. Somehow looking after little non-shedding Izzy seems simple in comparison.

We had reckoned on staying an extra week and the weather continued to delight:

but as you can see, there was hope on the horizon:

We had a "cannot be bothered to get off the boat" day during the worst of the winds. However, dinner in the marina restaurant made up for it. The fillet steak that was reared on the owner's farm was awesome. As was the jus that accompanied it. The chef offered to share the recipie for it but the crew got less interested when he calmly mentioned that the preparation takes place over 4 days.

Meanwhile, back at base camp (Penarth marina), Dave the charter angling boat skipper who we chat to a lot during the winter time there, caught one monster fish:

The conger eel was estimated to be over 60 lb in weight - they could not confirm that as the scales he had on board don't go that far! His boat is the most pampered and immaculate charter job that we've ever seen - look at Anchorman website. 

We had a final ferry trip over to Oban for supplies (last big supermarket choice until Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides) and raided the rather good Oban Chocolate company for coffee and cake one last time. Their carrot cake is up there in the all time list of greats - they use orange not lemon in the frosting and amazingly that made quite a difference too:

Sadly now the place is geared for take-aways so you get a paper plate and take away cup for the good coffee that they serve. Many years ago when we visited they were more cafe like.

Maintenance news:

Nothing too exciting really. The captain busied himself with a can of Gunk in the poor neglected engine room and cleaned up the flooring etc which was well overdue. Removing the oil mist that builds up over time is not a fun job but had to be done (over 30 months since the last time). The engines and engine drip tray cleaning fun is still to come although there are no oil / coolant / fuel leaks so it is just accumulated dirt that needs to be removed. 

One of the windscreen wiper blades had seen better days and so that got swapped out (simple job, remove a bolt and fit the new one). Then the blade in the old wiper was replaced so it can be the next spare. We do need a new pantograph arm for one of the 4 wipers. The retaining circlip has failed and so after a while in operation the second arm becomes loose and instead of a pantograph action, it is just a normal wiper on a  single spindle. It still works OK but..... When we saw the price of a new pantograph arm we decided not to rush into things. How much? Well, $320 US!! Plus import and shipping costs of course.