Of to Rhu thanks to the weather (something we haven't had to say for a while)

Although we had planned to spend longer on Bute and go further on the little bikes, the weather forecast was not playing ball. We wanted to head back to Rhu, ready to meet up with friends who would be arriving in a couple of days' time but today was the one remaining nice one. If we left a day later as we had intended, then it was going to be wet and windy. Very windy. So, we opted to enjoy the last lovely day and go early. Shame but we might well be back.

A gentle trip "up north" was enjoyed, Polly and Patrick keeping a close eye on how close to the shore we were going, just in case:

We were being chased by the ferry Ali Cat:

and he decided to pass across our stern and cut really close inshore to avoid the "loop" around us which would have lengthened his run to Gourock. We checked that the navy folks hadn't closed off the channel leading to Rhu for any serious warship movements and pressed on. The crew prepared the lines and fenders:

and we then dropped onto the same hammerhead berth we had used for a couple of nights earlier in the year. The pleasant 4 hour trip looks like this:

so not too tricky. A few porpoises to watch, the paddle steamer Waverley passed us and not much commercial traffic at all.

Also berthed in Rhu was one of the other serious passagemaking motor boats, an FPB. called Grey Wolf. We had seen her a couple of years ago in Tobermory, she gets used for some charter work. Have a read of her sale particulars in this weblink. Here is a borrowed image for you:

You will spot the major advantage over our Nordhavn - no polishing is needed on bare aluminium.

As the afternoon was such a warm and sunny one, we exhumed the bikes once more from the lazarette and cycled into Helensburgh, knowing that the chances of doing that the next day were vanishingly close to zero. No matter, it had been a great day. We were just a bit sad when we took the bimini cover off, preparing for some seriously strong winds coming in.

Carradale Bay to Port Bannatyne, then exploring Bute

Despite being sleep deprived, we managed to fire up the electronics, the main engine and to recover the 40 metres of chain or so that we had deployed and the anchor at the end of it. Amazingly the anchor was totally clean. No kelp, no mud and stones, A lovely sandy seabed to anchor on. As we headed off all was calm, sunny and good (even if the flybridge and wind deflector looks very distorted in this panorama picture):

The simple route to Port Bannatyne on Bute takes us up the western coast of Arran before heading over to Bute and  northwards. This image shows the full route all the way from Ardfern::

Towards the top of Arran there is a lovely spot, Lochranza. Our route was disturbed by one huge superyacht Aviva which had decided to anchor just off there, exactly where we wanted to go. As she looked rather expensive and probably had a few guns on board, together with people who know how to use them, we opted to head around her at an acceptable distance:

Luckily, taking pictures didn't seem to upset them:

The yacht looks almost like a computer generated model sitting anchored off Arran. Kind of incongruous too - the surroundings would better suit a classic old timber motor yacht built by Silvers or similar. According to the internet, the owner has a net worth of over £5 billion so we guess that the crew, maintenance and fuel costs are pretty insignificant for him. We are not even a teeny bit jealous, he would struggle getting into some of the places we love in our small Nordhavn. 

As you round the bottom of the Isle of Bute, you get to see the delightful little Glencallum bay and the resident teeny lighttower:

and further up the east coast, the amazing Mount Stuart house:

Once more a few porpoises about, one inquisitive seal but no dolphins. We are still convinced the dolphins here must all be SNP supporters and refuse to come and play when they see Fowey is the port of registration on our stern. We are too English, despite having lived in Edinburgh for a while.

The Bute shoreline has some impressive properties arranged along it. We (and Anne) fell in love with one that was up for sale a few years ago. Somehow buying it, persuading the Toddlers to move there, relying on the ferry to get to the mainland and the Coop for food put us off. Or was it because Anne promised to move into a spare room - mind you she did also plan to bring Izzy her dog which would soften the blow:

Some of the houses have an impressive backdrop of the mainland hills as you reach the NE corner of Bute:

Naturally, after a very relaxed time (on the flybridge again) we had to be disturbed by the Calmac ferry heading away from Rothesay:

A small course alteration was needed. 

We had pre-arranged the one berth in Port Bannatyne that we can realistically use. On this borrowed aerial view, it is the hammerhead (end berth) at the bottom right with a small yacht on it:

The pontoon length is way less than the length of our boat. If we align the stern with the end of it, we protrude so far towards the breakwater that nothing would get past us at low water. So, some shuffling and tinkering with mooring lines to get properly secured was needed. Always worth it though as the people here are just so friendly. Apart from one visiting yachtsman that is who made a mess of berthing, then uncoupled the hose we were using to fill our water tank, plugged in another and started filling his boat instead. Kind of ignorant people. We made him know that too. We realised the level of ignorance when they made departing from the berth the next morning a painful process with much shouting, confusion and drama. 

Taking the bikes (or should that be "being taken by the bikes"?) into Rothesay the main town we were forced to have an ice-cream as it was warm and sunny. Coffee and cake was saved for a gloomier day. A little Coop visit then back to enjoy the perfect evening. We do like this island.

Ardfern to Carradale bay anchorage

It wasn't an early early start. Just earlier than we would have picked. Leaving around 7am meant having an alarm set just in case. Naturally, it was not needed. We had a nice quiet trip with a wild 2.6 knot wind to gentle ruffle the surface of the sea. Just not very much. A grey start developed nicely into a sunny day as as headed south, pushing the tide a bit so that we could take it with us down to the Mull of Kintyre from around Gigha, and then around and up the other side almost all the way to the planned anchorage in Carradale Bay.

Nearing the island of Gigha, we spotted another Nordhavn on the AIS, only a way bigger, newer and nicer one. Due North, normally resident in Craobh was anchored off the island and was pottering around the northern end of it:

We passed too far off to get you some pictures of the lovely Nordhavn 68 and the equally lovely owner Gordon but you can see her properly on this You tube link.  Well worth looking at.

As we headed down to the Mull of Kintyre itself, we picked up a nice fair tide as planned and a couple of larger craft joined in:

The blue triangles on our system denote craft with the "Class A" AIS system that broadcasts more information then the cheaper class B kit. The B guys get distinguished by a green triangle. Anything the system thinks we are coming into close contact with (we define close contact) go a nice shade of red. One of them was a rather lovely Dutch classic sailing ship heading for Dublin just very slowly.

Looking towards the land, not the Dutch sailing ship, you get to see:

the lighthouse complex kind of dwarfed and rendered insignificant by the landscape it is set into.

Despite the 2.3 knots wind speed there was a reasonable swell on the beam, coming from the west / south west so for once we needed to activate the stabilisers to keep the crew happy and the boat on the proverbial even keel. The wind picked up but not to any great extent  - the one yottie out there was still motoring to get the right timing for the tides. As we rounded the Mull, taking an inshore route as it was relatively calm even in the areas with big depth variations, we got up to 11.6 knots over the ground - the cameraman was too slow to record vmax though:

so you will have to be content with 11.4 in the picture. At times we were getting 6 knots of tidal help. Very nice indeed. Here is the route:

and you can see the loop around the Mull. The little island group to the south of the Mull is Sanda-  we showed you that it was up for sale recently but it seems that none of our readers have put in an offer yet. We really don't understand why, You get views like this:

and when you look across to the mainland:

OK, it might not be that sunny and calm every day but... The islands look a bit boring from the camera picture:

but way better in real life, on a warm sunny day. In mid-winter with a full gale blowing you might regret your purchase a little bit more.

As we turned north, the wind picked up on the nose and things felt more "normal". The captain spotted a strange shape off to the east and through the binoculars it revealed itself as a submarine on the surface. Way too far away for a proper picture but you get the general idea from this:

We checked the forecast to make sure that the planned anchorage was still going to be sheltered, plodded up to Carradale Bay and dropped anchor in about 10 metres of water (which would be around 8 metres at low tide) with only 4 other yachts around. Amazing, peak season, lovely day, lovely anchorage in a huge bay area, pretty view, Isle of Arran mountains astern and still only 5 boats overnighting. Here is the view towards the mainland:

We'd been here once before with the Toddlers on board when a swarm (wrong collective noun but it felt like a swarm) of jellyfish killed our generator as we were cooking dinner. Not good to disrupt Toddler feeding times or to sting the captain when he fished out from the cooling water filter some extruded jellyfish remains. This time, we were lucky although some huge ones did drift past.

The wind dropped nicely and what should and could have been a very quiet and relaxing night became a real PITA. We'd taken the mobile phone into the cabin as it can link to our Furuno navigation gear and relay an anchor alarm. Only it decided to keep telling us that we had lost a mobile phone signal and that it was switching to WiFi calling (the boat has a WiFi setup, using an external aerial and a SIM card that can get signals in areas where the phone fails). A half asleep captain killed the alerts. They happened again. So, he disabled repeat notifications. Only they kept coming. Then we killed all notifications from the phone app. That didn't stop the ***** noises either. Eventually we just stopped all alerts - not what we wanted but we also needed sleep. 

The morning dawned sunny and pretty calm again, unlike the captain and crew who were suffering from a very disturbed night. Luckily we were anchored well away from any other humanity so nobody witnessed that.

Maintenance News:

Nothing to report. We gave the wing engine a workout as we approached the anchorage and it also behaved well. All in all a run of just over 12 hours that was pretty calm and enjoyable. Surely this gentle weather cannot last?

Oban, Kerrera and down to Ardfern

Whilst avoiding the rain and wind, we took the little local bus (which was always fashionably late of course) into Oban and raided the supermarkets, the Oban chocolate company and one excellent fish and chip shop. Yes, the Oban fish and chip shop (website link is here ) is pretty good, commended by no other than Rick Stein himself. We had a great lunch there.

Planning to head a bit further south we saw two very settled days and thought of going back around the Mull of Kintyre early. Then, a chance check on the Kerrera website revealed that we could have one night there. It was quickly booked as was a table in the Waypoint restaurant, have a look at this weblink 

The building and innards are nothing special:

but there are great views across to Oban. We visited a couple of years ago and were blown away by the quality of the food and the friendly service, so being able to go again was a huge bonus.

To quote Keith who ate there whilst we were in Dunstaffnage,  "Kerrera chocolate whiskey panna cotta was ball tingling". Enough said. Maybe they had chilli in it?

We left Dunstaffnage to take the little bit of tide south with us for the short run into Oban bay and the stop at Kerrera. Lovely day again, once more on the flybridge enjoying the views (just not the huge ugly fish farm you have to pass).  Our timing was perfect, we didn't have to wait for any departing or arriving ferries in the narrow north channel:

The weather was more than kind, another flybridge trip:

Here is the little light tower at the entrance to Oban Bay:

and the town itself:

Yes, those two pictures were taken only a couple of minutes apart - plenty of cloud over the mainland but a sunny Kerrera island beckoned. We had a short wander on the island, contemplated buying some venison and juniper burgers from the little farm shop but resisted then headed back on board. 

There were some interesting craft anchored / moored in the bay:

especially Florette:

who is already over 100 years old.

Some of the views across the island are lovely, if a bit spoiled by the camera totally flattening the perspective:

In the boatyard area, we had a real "blast from the past" moment, seeing a Broom 37 on the hardstanding. We had and loved one of them for many years:

Dinner was in the rather good Waypoint restaurant - the waitress told us about the specials and mentioned that there were only two fillet steaks left. Well, the crew jumped in for one so the captain had to follow. A really good evening, great food, friendly folks. The owner, Tim recognised us from a couple of years ago and came up for a chat. He has just bought a yacht and is taking part in the West Highland week races. They had sailed (mainly drifted!) to Craobh then got collected by fast RIB to come back for the night and help out in the restaurant / marina. The couple who own the place really work hard and deserve to succeed. 

Our trundle south continued the next day, leaving Kerrera around noon to take the start of the tide south with us. Again a nice sunny day so a flybridge job all the way. We are beginning to expect this - dangerous optimism we know. Moored off Kerrera are a couple of old naval craft, looking a little worse for wear:

Why the little blue trip boat decided to show it to the visitors on board was a bit beyond us, perhaps it was to show off the seals basking on the rock (hard to make out in this picture)

Cricklade, another old naval tender, looked a bit smarter:

As you head south, you pass the Kerrera ferry - this strange little outboard motor powered thing which on Saturday was not running for whatever reason. The passenger ferry run by the marina to Oban was ultra-busy ferrying day trippers and locals around:

You do wonder why (apart from initial cost) Calmac and the government would commission something propelled by petrol outboards with the kind of duty cycle that ferry gets. There again, they commissioned the ill fated Glen Sannox and her sister..... If you aren't familiar with that mess, read this Wikipedia article weblink and try not to get too upset at how public money was and is being spent.

Further down the island, you get some nasty rocks marked by this little guy:

and then you reach the end / southern tip of Kerrera, as did the little trip boat who took a couple of detours to show the passengers a seal and porpoise that were languidly surfacing and diving. Still no dolphins since the Irish sea though:

Here is the route, you pick up some swell from the Atlantic as you lose the shelter from the Isle of Mull:

We actually used the stabilisers for a while, their first exercise in ages as the crew objected to the roll that was magnified because we were sitting up top. Heading down the sound of Luing we hit 11.6 knots speed over the ground (through the water was 6.2) A nice shove to help us along and through the whirlpool areas where we got spun around nicely. As we headed to the Dorus Mor we could see one of the fleets of the West Highland Week yacht racers in the far distance. This poor picture gives you a hint as to why we didn't want to get involved in threading our way through them:

Not many of them were (understandably)  bothering to use AIS for the race as marinetraffic showed:

The final run up Loch Craignish was lovely, wind behind us, sun out, a couple of yachts drifting slowly in the light airs. The main engine got a wide open throttle run to help clear out all the oily and sooty bits then we stopped at Ardfern, a favourite pretty location. Sitting on the flybridge in the sun, watching the antics of boats arriving and departing, drinking tea (yes, just tea) and generally absorbing the atmosphere. Great day and a lovely evening too: 

Maintenance news:

Nothing exciting to report, we gave the main engine about a half litre of oil as a top up though, that should see us through to the winter oil change. The Lugger / Deere really does not burn much at all. 1/2 litre in 110 hours  (around 1000 litres of fuel burned) is well within specification. According to the Deere information, we need to worry if we start burning around a litre of oil per 380 litres of fuel used.

Tobermory to Dunstaffnage in the sun

Well, we had a hard decision to make. Our original plan had been to head out to South Uist (one of the islands in the Outer Hebrides chain) and the weather was just perfect for a gentle, enjoyable run out there. However, things were starting to go downhill in the forecasts with a couple of days of rain to look forward to. On the basis that being anchored off or in Lochboisdale harbour for what might be three soggy days with a very unsettled long term outlook, we opted to start slowly heading back south. Plenty of other places to explore / enjoy and we have some visitors coming in August who might find the Outer Hebrides a bit of a challenge to get to.

We wanted to hide up in Kerrera for a while to enjoy the rather wonderful welcome and restaurant there but it was full. Actually, that is not factually correct, the two berths and 4 buoys we could use were already booked. With the madness of West Highland Week coming up, it was only going to get worse. That is the local yacht race event that moves around, infests various nice places and displaces any cruising boats to other areas. The 2024 schedule looks like:

and everywhere in Oban / Kerrera (the island) will be rammed with racers. Usually up to 100 yachts, Carnage.

We don't actually like the Dunstaffnage marina operation much but opted to go there for a few nights as it had some space, it has a good bus service and / or cycle track in to Oban and the area around it is very pretty. Historically the organisation of the place has varied from appalling to just a bit bad. Time would tell...

The day was perfect. Just perfect. Sunny, warm enough for a flybridge trip all the way and an excuse to break out the sun protection stuff for pasty white arms and faces. This was the view heading down the Sound of Mull:

We don't often run the boat from up top, so here is what the helm station looks like:

The route to Dunstaffnage was timed to take advantage of the tide which can run quite hard through parts of the Sound. Once again Vessel Finder seemed to lose part of our track:

whilst Marine Traffic got the lot:

They must have many more shorebased stations capturing the data for them. We are too mean to pay anyone for the satellite derived data - we really do not need it. As it was a lovely day, several other yachts were out and about and a few commercial vessels too. Here is how AIS and our plotter saw them, Of course the ones without AIS are not visible without firing up the radar overlay which would really confuse you! It does seem that most yachts around here have an AIS transmitter now and they use it:

Approaching Loch Aline, the little ferry headed across in front of us:

Not the prettiest member of Calmac's fleet. Ardtornish point has the regulation little light tower and a ruin, only we were a bit far away for a good picture:

Pushing against the tide and into the wind, this Dutch barque was motoring the other way. At 98 years old (originally built as a whaling ship in Norway) she looked good for her age:

We hate to even contemplate the annual maintenance costs and how on earth they can be covered by charter guest fees. Lovely to see though. 

As we approached Lismore island (you can see it on the route images above - the "long thin one") there were a couple of yachts fighting the tide trying to come in our direction. With a nice rock in the way, and two yachts in the middle of the channel (no idea why) the ferry following us decided to divert to the south of Lady Rock. A good move as the yachts were barely moving under engine. 

Lismore lighthouse is pretty cute:

and the dramatic setting behind it is always impressive as you look towards the Nevis mountain range in the far distance. We crept into Dunstaffnage at low water and dropped onto the outside of the big breakwater as instructed. It is always fun contacting them as they use VHF channel 37 - most marinas are on 80. Our nice Icom radios don't have 37 on them so we rely on the handheld with a way more limited range, or just the mobile telephone. They seem better at answering the phone than a radio call by the way. 

Once more the admin in the place amazed us but we complied with the form filling and then chilled, enjoying the views as the evening drew in and some night clouds built:

A really great day. First end to end flybridge trip of the year too. Sad, but the weather had not allowed us one so far. The run took around 4 very happy hours.

Maintenance news:

Nothing really. The big Lugger was fine, it has done just over 100 hours so far this season, not exactly over-worked. The Captain was going to replace the drinking water filter in the galley but couldn't be bothered. Sloth has set in big time.