Wednesday 22 July 2009

West Coast Cruising!!

It’s amazing, two blinks and the time has just flown by! I realised that I haven’t blogged for a few days, not since seeing Hillary. We managed to catch up with her and her crew in the Canal, on our final full day of the second Scottish trip. Hillary is doing amazingly well, it was really good to see her again, and to see her in the Caledonian Canal after 2 months of sailing was really special. She is due to finish sometime in August, may the North Sea be as kind to her as it was to us.
A few days have passed now, and we have had another crew change. Fort William was a rather quick changeover again, but luckily we had 4 volunteers from Skandia who came to help us get the boat ready for the new crew – and another big thank you to them, it really does help especially when we have such short change over times. This week we have Gareth, Fran, Rachel, Joe and Luke on board, with Tim from Skandia and Cath, our token Aussie from EMT, on as volunteers for the week. We have had an incredible time so far, with everyone settling in very quickly, not without a few comments about the Ashes (and also the start of our own Scarlet Ashes series), but all in good spirits.
We said goodbye to new friends made in Ft William who came down to the boat to wave us off, out the sealock and off again. Ben Nevis even came out of the clouds for us for the day, which was just spectacular. What a way to enter the Atlantic cruising grounds and the start of our West Coast cruising...
I was feeling incredibly lucky again, as the weather forecast we had seen earlier did suggest that we might be spending a few days playing card games in Ft William, but thankfully that changed and out we went. We sailed down to Dunstaffnage, through Loch Linnhe. Unfortunately it was more like a drift with intermittent motoring and the occasional blast when a gust came down the Loch. We managed to get the kite out again, but not so successfully as our magic furler was not so magic, forcing us to ditch the kite and resort to just plain sailing.
Dunstaffnage is a really pretty natural harbour, tucked up in amongst some islands, with an old castle ruin on the entrance. The whole area is just so impressive, and again, we were blessed with another incredible day out today.
We left Dunstaffnage in good old Scottish dreich, having eaten square sausage and potato muffins for breakfast. Not very much wind at all, so we motored up through Kerrera Sound to Puilladobhrain, which is a lovely little anchorage. The sun came out just in time for our Atlantic Challenge, and this time most of the crew joined in and jumped into the water. It was freezing, so we pretty much all shot straight out again. However, it wasn’t long till we were back in again and swimming our lap around the boat, with some braver souls (namely Karen and Luke) heading round again.
The sun stayed with us for the afternoon, but sadly the wind didn’t materialise much at all, so we spent most of the day motoring.
We had a fantastic welcome into Crinan Canal, with a young Scot playing his bag pipes for us. Peter has also very kindly offered to send us a couple helpful hands as we make our way through the canal tomorrow, should be great fun as from here to Ardrishaig it is all manual labour that opens and closes the locks… I hope the boys are feeling strong for tomorrow.
Good night from a very beautiful Crinan,
Cath

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