Oban excursion, then leaving Ardfern for the equally lovely Kerrera

The weather, although nothing like as hot as the south coast, was still lovely. Unfortunately, we were not going to take advantage of it as the crew had a pretty large "floater" in her eye - the one that had a cataract operation last year. That is a warning sign of possibly very bad things so the crew called the biggest optician in Oban to get a same day check.  Specsavers of course. They were a bit process focussed  and rather unhelpful but did offer a late afternoon time slot.

As there are not hundreds of buses to and from Ardfern every day, we got the next one and then just walked into Lekalake Opticians. The exterior was a bit sad, the interior was way better but the service and support from the new owners, Calum and Helen was truly excellent. Most importantly, all was well with the eye after a thorough check. The bus back was the one that collects the kids after school and we were quietly amazed at how well behaved they were compared to some we've encountered down south. A strange day that ended well.

To kind of celebrate, we decided to visit the Galley of Lorne hotel / restaurant for dinner:

It is the only gig on the village and gets VERY varied feedback and is called the Galley of porn by some. However, Princess Anne has her yacht in Ardfern and has been known to eat there so.... We walked from the bus into the hotel reception and rang the bell, wanting to book a table as advised. Only nobody answered the bell. Still nobody. Tried the bell again, same lack of interest. Then a feckless youth wandered through, saw us said he was nothing to do with the place but said he would get someone. We then managed to get booked.

Arriving later on, we were amazed at how well refurbished the interior of the hotel was. The restaurant area was huge, well decorated but pretty empty. Here is a borrowed image:

The food was OK. The waiter (later we found out he was the owner) had a major BO problem going on which somewhat spoiled things. Then we tried to pay to find that his card payment system had gone down, there was a small queue of people in the bar wanting to pay (World Cup football night had dragged them out) and they wanted to see the match.

The malodourous owner was now sweating profusely which really didn't help fix the problem or improve the atmosphere much. He tried different machines, various reboots, bad words and nothing helped. The captain had a look on-line and of course Worldpay were reporting system performance issues..... This didn't help his mood or odour one bit. We did a bank transfer and escaped before we were overcome with the fumes.

Quite an odd evening to round off an odd day really.

Our last day in Ardfern was spent doing some more serious polishing - an area of the superstructure that hadn't been touched for far too long and needed cutting back so the machine polisher was called into service and the captain's back knew all about that, leaning over the boat deck to do the side of it. Still, we managed a little chunk of the huge expanse we have to do if the weather allows. To quote a well known UK supermarket "every little helps". 

The next boat trip was going to be to Kerrera, the lovely little island off Oban. To get there you need to pass through one of the many tidal gates in the area, this one is called the Dorus Mor. Once again, tide timings dictated an earlyish departure. Here is why timing is important:

The Dorus Mòr is a notorious tidal race located off the west coast of Scotland, between the Craignish peninsula and the island of Garbh Reisa. As the tide funnels through this narrow passage, it creates fierce currents, whirlpools, and standing waves that can reach up to 8 knots during spring tides

Yes, as we only do 8.5 knots or so flat out, pushing an 8 knot tide would be entertaining, never mind the whirlpools and standing waves. For non-boating folks, those wavy lines on the chart means just what you would imagine.

Once through that little gate, which we did at pretty much slack water, we had a rather nice trip up the Sound of Luing. Here is the route:

and once again you can see that Vessel Finder kind of lost us for a big chunk of the trip. The dotted line they use to join things up would have been a real nautical challenge:

Nice enough weather:

with Patrick and Kylie on watch as usual:

As we approached Kerrera, this rather serious superyacht was anchored off the island with an amazingly noisy generator running:

They certainly didn't need the aircon so we did wonder why such a big and noisy genset was in operation! We'd been told that we were going onto the water taxi berth so we headed around the pontoons and saw that it looked pretty full. Gill, the owner of the place came rushing down, called over to us and redirected us to a finger berth on the other side of the marina. She then sprinted over to help with the lines. Quite some service.

We had to back in, between the pontoon and a large yacht with the wind wanting us to snuggle up to the yacht. The yacht's owners had dashed out when Gill arrived and told them that they had a neighbour coming. Then they saw the neighbour was a lardy Nordhavn and were even more worried. There wasn't too much spare space as you can see:

but all went rather well to the relief of our neighbours who later told us about the damage they'd had from visiting craft in the past. Gill helped with the forward line, commented on how well the boat turns and said "that wasn't your first rodeo". Yes, they do handle well, the stern thruster wasn't needed.

We'd arrived just before noon so in the afternoon we had a little walk through the island, checking out the local farm's honesty shop and enjoying the views:

A pity it was overcast, you don't get to see the real beauty of the hills and the many colours:

It was strange that in a nice wet place like the west coast of Scotland, the Kererra folks need to invest in their own water supply:

Folks rely on their own springs or boreholes and have to take responsibility for the purification plant too. Proper off-grid living. 

Whilst on Kerrera, we took the water taxi over to Oban to do some shopping in the big supermarkets - not many more of those as you head further north.  Hudson, the bernadoodle was so cute:

and amused / detained us for a while. 

We also had a lunch in the Waypoint restaurant at the marina, run by Tim and Gill who  own the marina and also have a farm on the island so the ingredients are usually pretty fresh. As you can see from the specials board, they change quite regularly:

On our last Kerrera island day, we had some visitors. Helen, the optician who kindly checked the crew's eyeball last week, came over with Calum her other half and their daughter. Tea, coffee, chat and a guided tour of the boat followed. The 3 year old was very busy with the profusion of cuddly toys we have inherited on board and was most content. We all took the ferry across to Oban later, we wanted to raid the supermarkets before we moved on to the land of small Co-op shops at best. Helen and Calum probably just wanted to escape us.