Rhu to Troon in a calmer spell

Finally, after a full week and a bit of unending windy stuff, there was a calm and sunny day promised by the met office folks. Even better, it materialised too. So, we took advantage of it for the start of our trek back south. We planned to head to Troon initially so a gentle little run down the Clyde area was planned. As you can see, the sun was certainly out:

and the wind strength was a tenth of what it had been the day before:

when we had seen nearly 50 knot gusts. All good really! We even had some pictures taken of us and posted onto Marine Traffic as we passed Gourock:

Rare to get a picture underway - Tommy the photographer kindly sent us all of the images he'd taken. The boat looks a bit naked - no bimini cover as we had decided not to bother to replace it on the spreader bars. Why? Well, because the forecast for the days following was a return to strong winds and the odd torrent of rain too. We left the cover in a locker to protect it from the upcoming gales. 

It was good to be underway again and to enjoy the sun and gentle conditions too - at times the true wind speed dropped to 1.6 knots, pretty much nothing. The route to Troon kind of hugs the coast of the mainland with nice island views on the way:

We had a very chilled trip, even the ferries to Great Cumbrae passed in front of us and didn't force any course alteration. Totally spoiled really:

Somehow, Ardrossan lingers in our minds as a sad sad town, where even the bookies was shuttered up. Passing it is preferable to stopping - even the daymark on the little island off the harbour looks a bit sad:

This slightly larger guy was anchored just south of the place:

and forced us into a diversion - most irritating! The odd thing is how the camera showed the sky colours so differently in the two pictures when they were taken within a minute or so of each other. The sky really was blue by the way:

We'd seen a couple of baby superyachts anchored on the trip. One off Kip marina and this one off Troon as we approached:

Their AIS transmission had been set up rather amusingly (or should that be optimistically?):

 

Check the destination....

The wing engine had a good half hour of exercise to make sure it was all OK and the main had a nice little wide open throttle blast to give it a clean out too. To heck with the fuel consumption - remember that we were burning about 9 litres per hour doing 6.3 knots and then 33lph doing around 8.5 knots. You can do the maths. 

We had called the Troon folks and arranged a berth for a week or so and were given a nice big finger to back into. The boat was well trussed up in prep for the coming blowy days, topped up with water and we just enjoyed the sunny evening. It felt like a treat.

Maintenance News:

Nothing exciting except that the toilet seat in the fwd heads was pretty loose and needs sorting out. The fixings are blind (incredibly annoying design Raritan) and the thing was fitted ages ago after Andrew and Linda brought it to Oban by train all the way from Weymouth. You might well ask why - this earlier blog post will explain it all 2014 blog post link and show you what a proper chap Andrew is.

We opted to wait for a wet day to dismember the fwd heads - that kind of fun can wait......

Doing the post trip engine checks, the captain noticed that the steering reservoir pressure ought to have a  top up before our next longer passage. It was sitting at around 8psi, having dropped from the normal 15 during the summer's travels. The book says to run at around 20 / 25 but we've heard of folks doing that and blowing out a seal.