Gigha to Campbeltown then Carradale Bay

The tide times for a run around the Mull of Kintyre were good - departure around 10:30 am gave us nice tidal help in the areas where the tide runs strongly. The weather played ball too as a strong NW wind that could make the Mull a bit rough (the official forecast was for 3m waves) would come well after we were on the eastern side of the mainland and hence sheltered.

So, we duly weighed anchor bringing up plenty of weed and mud:

and headed south avoiding pot markers and a couple of little fishing boats.  The plan was to go into Campbeltown, raid the local Tesco / Co-op and go for some walks / cycle rides around the loch. The crew had called the folks who run the pontoon there and the message was that there would be space as long as we arrived before the masses pitch up in the late afternoon.

From our route you can work out that this didn't happen as planned:

It was a nice calm trip south to the Mull with a gentle southerly wind on the nose.  Yes, gentle! Not at all what we had been used to this season. (We hesitate to say "summer"!)  Heading around the Mull you can see that we went a little way off the land to avoid the overfalls and rougher water. We did enjoy the 10.2 knots speed over the ground at 1450rpm! (With no tide help that would be more like 6.1 or 6.2 knots). As the conditions were reasonable, we cut inside Sanda island - the little lump of land you can see to the south east of the Mull above. That gave us the opportunity to add another little lighthouse picture, again in slightly misty conditions:

As we headed north towards Campbeltown, the wind duly changed direction and began to pick up. We felt quite smug about our timing, use of the tides and the shelter we were in. Somehow that was a bad thing. As we entered Campbeltown loch, the crew contacted the moorings folks to be told that someone had filled up the slot intended for us, in theory just as a lunchtime stop. The promised one hour stay had extended into way longer and there was no sign of life on board yet. As there are no nice anchorages in the loch, we went to plan B:

heading out and up to Carradale Bay where we could anchor and get some shelter from the strengthening winds too. On the way we saw a couple of dead gannets on the water and a couple of other birds looking very ill - they didn't even try to move as we approached and were floating "head down". Avian flu?

One other yacht was already in the bay but as it is a nice big area we could stay well away from them. Plenty of chain was used to secure us nicely and the big Rocna anchor dug in quite reassuringly. We retired inside and listened to the 30 knot gusts and our anchor snubber line taking the strain. Normal weather for 2022 was resumed. To give you an idea of how much we swung in the big gusts of wind, the backup GPS thought we were doing 0.4 knots whilst firmly anchored:

Please ignore the date - this device needs a software update, it is suffering from the GPS rollover issue we mentioned a while ago.

Maintenance News:

Nothing really, the belt dust from the new multi-V belt had dropped a lot. The anchor light was being pesky though - sometimes it would not switch on properly. We guess that the connectors on the bulb in the housing are getting corroded and need cleaning. However we cannot easily get to it, positioned high up on the stack without some serious climbing / safety gear. It might be time to fit an LED bulb in a housing that is better sealed against moisture ingress.