After we dropped Karen off, the weather turned from mild to horrible, so we had to cross the bay over to Oban Kerrera. You are only allowed to stay in Oban Transit for a limited period, and while it is bad weather than we would rather be in a Marina, so that Beverley can create videos and I can earn some money. So all morning I worked, but come the evening I just want to switch off, which means that I was watching trash. Of course Beverley filmed me at that time, which was annoying of her, but we do film reality rather than fantasy, so I only have myself to blame.
As soon as we could however, we were back out sailing again. So this time we were sailing up the Lynn of Lorn to Loch Linnhe Marina. We motored out of Oban, passing another boat close hauling for all it's worth and a motor boat that was creating quite a wake. Soon it was time for us yo get our sails up and set them for down wind sailing. I soon realised that for Beverley and I this is a point of sail that we hardly do, so I set a reef in the main so that it was not blanking the main, but that wasn't working so I put the Genoa away and just had a preventer on the main. It was a different point of sail for me but, you are not going to learn anything if you don't try new things.
We were doing this sail so that we could get to see Castle Argh. Beverley is a big Monty Python fan and when she had found out that we had been so close to the castle a few years ago, she was gutted, so on this trip we said we would correct that little over site. The scenery up was beautiful, with houses nestled on the hillsides and a large colony of seals. I really enjoyed the sail, for a couple of reasons, the parts that we were sailing were new on my personal chart and I was learning something new.
At last we reached our destination, joining the other 80 boats that were all on mooring balls. In the morning however, we found out that there was space on the pontoon, so we weaved our way through the mooring field to the pontoon so that we could get more diesel and fill the water tanks. The pontoon had rather weird cleats on posts so, a little bit different from what we were expecting, but we coped. Once we had filled up the tanks, it was time for our walk to Castle Argh.
On our way there we found a little clearing in some trees, so that we could carry out our little silliness.
Firstly I stepped into something horrible so I was christened dung foot, but Arthur needed knights for a quest so I was knighted as Sir poop a lot, a kiddy joke if there ever was one. Next Beverley banged two Chinese bowls together so that we could ride through the forest, then at last we saw it Castle Argh.
I have to say, the drone footage of Castle Argh is pretty spectacular and it was well worth the walk to get it.
After our walk, we stayed the night on the pontoon before carrying on with our little journey. This time we were close hauling with a full set of sails, but we had a gust of 25knots so we were a little bit too healed for our liking so we heaved too and put a reef in the main sail. I am so glad that Beverley and I had practiced that manoeuvrer in Belfast Lough because we have put it into practice so many times now. With Salty Lass in 20knots of wind she needs a reef in the Genoa to heave to, otherwise she is just a little bit too nose heavy.
As we travelled down Lynn of Morvern, the number of time we had to trim our sails was ridiculous. Where the hills were high, we had no wind but where the valleys were we had winds up to 28 knots, so we were on a constant battle to trim the sails and get Salty Lass sailing the way we like. To make best use of the wind we tacked quite a few times, and some of them were quite close in but realistically we were 300m out with 100 meters of depth, so I have no reason to have the heebie-jeebies, but I did.
Once at the bottom of the Sound of Mull, the wind was straight on our nose so we put the sails down and motored into Loch Aline.
