Ardfern to Gigha

The sun had been out for a whole day and, guess what, it stayed out for another one! As it was nice and calm too, we decided to continue our slow trip south, planning to anchor near Tayvallich for the night. A quick trip to the local stores for fruit and then we headed off, enjoying the warmth on the flybridge. Somehow after weeks of grim weather it felt as though we had deserved it. As you can see, it was rather calm and sunny:

So we happily sat up top and enjoyed the views, wildlife and the tiny number of other craft out and about.  Our original plan was to head to the Tayvallich anchorage and either find some space there or just outside the moorings. However, that plan was modified a little en route as we decided to head further south to Gigha to take advantage of favourable tide times and weather for a trip around the Mull of Kintyre on the following day:

Loch Craignish was sunny but a little bit of mist was hanging around, together with one yacht bound for Jura:

As we got further south so the mist built up and made things look a bit more "grey" but it was still nice enough to stay up top. Here is an addition to the lighthouse collection - the little one on the mid channel rock at Ruadh Sgeir:

The sun, mist and wildlife combination was lovely really. Plenty of porpoises languidly turning in the water (they always look so lazy compared to dolphins),  lots of guillemot mum and chick combinations out, plenty of gannets and fortunately few pesky seagulls. This was approaching the entrance to Loch Sween, where you turn back on yourself to head up to Tayvallich:

and how the plotter sees things:

We did feel a little guilty at disturbing this poor gannet:

Most simply swim away but we clearly had spooked him / her:

Lots of energy expended in the takeoff.

Heading to Gigha, we had to wait for the CalMac ferry that was going into East Loch Tarbert. There are not that many sailings per day but we manage to time things to catch them perfectly it seems. Such luck. The northern end of Gigha is blighted by the fish farm mess that is taking over more and more of the area. Poor pictures thanks to the mist and the distance but you get to see how the farms look:

CalMac then treated us to another delay, waiting for the little ferry that links Gigha to the mainland before we anchored off. In a raft of weed we spotted three dead birds - it seems that the avian flu really is rampant in the wild bird population around here this year. So sad to see. (OK, we have to come clean, if they were all dead seagulls then we would not feel so sad as there are plenty of spares). 

The visitor mooring buoys and the pontoon were not that busy despite the nice weather:

and we enjoyed a very peaceful evening and night indeed. We had contemplated a walk but that involved getting the dinghy down and exercise. Somehow it was less tempting than it should have been.....

Since we had been "up top"rather than in the pilothouse, we missed the main engine achieving 4,000 hours running:

Just about run in now according to the Deere folks.

Maintenance News:

Well, the main engine ran well despite all the dismantling, prodding, pulling, heating and other general indignity it suffered when the torsional damper was replaced and the oil and filter changed too.  All ran well, just some belt dust from the two new drive belts to clean up. Probably more from the big multi-V belt than the last time it was renewed but there is no way to tweak the alignment of the pulleys - they are fixed so we are guessing (hoping) that it is just new belt syndrome! 

The simple V belt for the engine start battery alternator is a real pain to get running properly parallel to the crankshaft pulley, the alternator always needs shimming out a little. That seems to be all OK, no excessive dust from it. We fitted a Gates Fleetrunner belt which is supposed to have a way longer life than the standard ones. The "standard" belt that we removed still looked fine with little wear after 4 years use. Remember that it only has to run a little alternator which tops up the energy used to start the engine and then runs at about 2 amps output all the time, just to keep the engine controls, stop solenoid etc working. The alternator and hence belt do not have much to do really. Ages ago we abandoned the original twin belt setup that was impossible to get nicely aligned and moved to a single belt. Two really are overkill to just run the load of the little alternator.