Short hop to Campbeltown then some exploring

After all too short a sleep, we slowly roused ourselves and imbibed vast amounts of medicinal tea. That helped dull the lack of sleep feeling, even though it was decaffeinated. The weather was supposed to be dry for a few days so we fancied going to Campbeltown as there are some good cycling opportunities from there. 

The little pontoon area gets pretty busy so the crew called the very friendly and helpful Callum who said that several folks had headed off and there was some space for us. Anchor up (no kelp, just mud this time) and we headed off. You can see the "backtracking" from the anchorage to Campbeltown on our MarineTraffic route:

You will see how much closer to the land we went as it was daylight and dry - pot spotting was much simpler. Approaching the entrance to Campbeltown Bay:

and then heading towards the town, with Davaar island astern:

Despite being tired, we had a wake up shower then a good walk around town. Dear old Calmac still cannot run the summer only service here from Ardrossan which must hurt the local economy. The road trip around is quite a long one in comparison to sitting on a ferry:

There is an alternative involving taking a ferry to Arran, then another from Lochranza over to the Kintyre peninsular if you really want to.... The CalMac terminal here looks seriously sad - they haven't bothered to update their scruffily taped message  in the terminal that is now 3 years old either:

All very sad for "The Wee Toon" as it is known. The expansive harbour area now seems to survive on a few fishing boats and some timber exports. The building of wind turbine blades ended quite a while ago so that export traffic has gone. One of the pilot boats was out for maintenance:

and we were amazed to find two more laying around, waiting for something to do:

How a place that has so little commercial traffic needing a pilot justifies having 3 pilot boats is beyond us. Bet the pilotage charges are high!

We were happily berthed and on a good spot for photography from the fish quay opposite:

Several visitors were taking pictures of the boat, not sure if they were Nordhavn dreamers or just thought she was a strange looking thing amongst the yachts.

After a decent night's sleep we dug out the bikes and cycled along the waterside, heading south. Here is the southern side of Davaar island with the Isle of Arran in the background:

Not too bad really. Just to prove there is still some timber being cut and shipped out, this was a small stack along the roadside:

with that lovely fresh cut timber smell too. We headed back into town and then around the north side of the bay / loch. Some nice houses there and this hotel looking impressive:

We remember it as the place that poor Roland, the marine engineer who did lots of Nordhavn work, almost stayed in. We say almost as he got there stupidly late, fell asleep on the bed fully clothed and left again before breakfast to carry on repairing the Kintyre Express ferry. For the full story look at this previous blog post. We still miss Roland and the random phone chats we had so much.

Back in town, the pet shop has a sense of humour:

which is much needed as a lot of the shops are empty, as are two old hotels etc etc. Sad to see as the location is beautiful and the buildings show just how wealthy the area was in the past.  Now it seems as though the only things flourishing are coffee shops and hairdressers. Only one of these is of any interest to the less than hirsute captain.

Another cycle trip took us across the peninsular to Machrihanish:

We hadn't completed the 100 miles walk mentioned on the notice board. More like 6 miles on the bike. 

The area is one we've only heard about in the shipping forecast when they report on the weather conditions there. It hosts Campbeltown airport which has the odd flight to Glasgow but a long military history. Oddly, in the 1980s it was a designated emergency landing place for the US space Shuttle! That would have been quite something to see.

There is a glorious beach in the area:

and we imagined trying to prize Izzy the doglet off there when we want to leave - it would not go well. They also have a rather swish Golf Clubhouse that some kind insurers paid for after a fire in the old building:

with an amazing course running alongside the beach itself. Our friend Niall had  a moment of glory there, coming second in a big open competition. It is nice to know someone famous.

All in all a good stay and plenty of bike exercise too. 

As a post-script, this lovely image of our boat passing Toward Point was posted on Marinetraffic by the Nordhavn dreamer folks we met in Stornoway. Tom is a serious photographer as you can tell:

Thanks Tom, hope to see you again soon.

Maintenance news:

The fuel polishing filter was replaced and the main engine temperature sender connections got a clean up. A few little jobs ticked off the list. Hopefully the cleaning up of the contacts will stop the strange behaviour of the temperature gauge that happened on the last long trip. We often see a quick reduction or increase in temperature as the second higher temp thermostat in the cooling system opens or closes. This behaviour was a bit different, more like a poor connection. If it happens again we will drain a bit of coolant, spin out the sender and give the contacts a really good clean - it was hard to access them fully in situ - then a coat of Stabilant 22 on the pins to help.

The big drive belt on the main engine was checked for wear too - a bit of full frontal, naked John Deere for you:

This full frontal is unlikely to make much money on the Only Fans website we fear.

We also measured up the pulley and belt as an alternator swap is being considered. This one works fine but (there is always a but) it needs 100% field current and quite a few rpm to wake it up. That causes fun when the external regulator tries to swap from bulk charging to float. So, some investigation into a nice new Arco replacement to go with the Arco external regulator was investigated too. Might well be a 2027 project.