We had done a short bunny hop down the coast to Puilladobhrain Anchorage which was quite snug with quite a few yachts all anchored up. The entrance to the anchorage is 4m in depth but with having our zero at 2m below the water line, we were recording 1.5m in places which for Beverley felt a little bit squeaky bum time. I told her to get a grip because when I went to the moorings at Loch Linnhe Marina we were as low as 0.8m and when we ran aground, we were as low as 0.1m in the channel going down to the anchorage at Hilbre Island. Finding somewhere where we could anchor was more of a challenge because there was quite a few boats already anchored so finding a wee spot, not too close to the shore, and not too close the other boats was a challenge. Thank goodness for ranging rings because Beverley and I are really bad at judging distances. Once we were moored up we had some tea, then we got Salty Sausage down so that we could fly our drone and go for a walk.
Beverley flies the drone, although I bought it I'm scared of crashing it. I do love the results though, I love the sense of perspective that you get with drone footage, it really gives you a sense of place. Once we had got a good few minutes of drone footage, we went for a walk to find the bridge over the Atlantic. For our walk we had to dance across a plank over a quagmire, hack through a Scottish fern jungle and romped down a rabbit infested hill, until we found what we were looking for,
"The bridge across the Atlantic"
It was even more prosaic than I imagined. In Navionics, it is just a bridge over Clachan Sound, but from a marketing point of view, it is the bridge over the Atlantic. For me I thought that this would be a great place to propose to somebody, especially if one person was from Scotland and the other from America, but the bar staff at the local pub could neither confirm or deny this. After our walk we stopped off at one of the other yachts at the anchorage, as they follow us, and it is always great to chat to our followers.
The next day, I was incredibly apprehensive, I had decided that I wanted to set myself a challenge and that challenge would be to navigate through Cuan Sound. In the pilotage, it mentioned that the tide ran at 7knots. On top of the fast tide there was several rocks that needed to be avoided and the pilotage mentioned that it was possible to be swept onto the rocks, so pretty scary stuff, but I wanted a challenge and this was the challenge that I was setting myself.
Coming down to Cuan Sound was like navigating through a sea of grey, the sky was particularly overcast and everything was grey, like motoring through an art project where you build up a scene from layer upon layer of grey mountains. As I entered the sound, the tide caused the water to go prickly and I could see whirlpools forming. On top of the rocks that I needed to dodge I could see the ferry in front of me, so just another thing to add to my worries. As I continued the speed of Salty Lass started to rise and we were doing 10.0knots. I had wanted Beverley to film, but we were both living in the moment so the camera was put down as I steered Salty Lass through the channel. We decided to put Salty Lass on full throttle so that I could control Salty Lass. As I dodged the rocks we were well over 10knots and it was really scary. The passage is short and we were soon through and down to a more manageable 8.1knots, there was still plenty of whirlpools in evidence but the worst of the tidal push was over. After the little passage I still needed to hand steer, as there was so much weed about, but soon we were in Craobh marina where I put the dehumidifier on because I was wet.
I have to say Cuan Sound was defiantly a challenge, one I do not want to repeat. I was just going to add a comment into the log to that effect, when I saw that Beverley had already written NOT DOING THAT AGAIN!!! Apart from drying off, the only thing else that we did at Craobh was go for a walk so that our followers could see the Green buoy that looks red and the red buoys that are so faded that they looked grey.
We just stayed the night at Craobh before we went out the next day. Coming down the Sound of Jura, we picked up a fair amount of tide and soon we were back over 10knots. This 10knots was very different from Cuan Sound in that there was sea room, space for you to react and space for mistakes.
