We were in Carrickfergus for a few days seeing Beverley's mum, sorting out the engine and doing shopping, but it was at last time to be off and although we left late as we were saying goodbye to people and we enjoy that, but we still had enough time to sail to Larne Lough and drop the anchor. While we were there we created our passage plan for going all the way ip to Gigha. With in our passage plan we had the following all sorted out.

• Alternate destinations - Places we could go if the weather turned nasty
• Way points - Places we should be at certain times, these we marked with a cross in a box
• Course to steer - As we go across the tide, crossing to Gigha, then the tide in the North channel will affect our course, so we compensate this by putting in a course to steer

Once we had discussed our passage plan then be both knew what each of us was doing. Having good communication between each other is good.

So we set off and we were doing well on our plan especially as we had found a counter current close in where according to our plan we should be getting tide against us. Just as we were close to Glenarm, we saw a huge thunder cloud and it looked like it was coming our way. I was concerned about the down draughts that a cloud like that can bring, while Beverley was concerned about the lightning itself. So we decided to go to Glenarm, getting wet along the way.

While we were in Glenarm, we asked everyone about what was causing our chirp and everyone came back fan bely, so we put the old one back on and the chirp left. Happy days

We had to stay in Glenarm for a few nights, because of the weather but we were soon on our way again crossing the North Channel. Although parts of our passage had moved because of the times, it was more or less correct because we had to leave Glenarm one hour after high tide because we wanted light in and around Glenarm, because of all the pots that are in that area.

It was not a bad sail, but we did use the engine just because we wanted to get through the North Channel section as quickly as possible.

Once in Gigha we took a mooring ball, as it was to the North of the bay, while the anchorage was to the South and would be a lee shore with the wind direction we had. We only stayed the one night as we needed to get on travelling to Oban.

We had a cracking sail up the side of Gigha but when we came out of the protection of the island we were in a F6 wind so we decided to go to West Loch Tarbot. We anchored just inside the loch and as soon as we were in the anchorage, the wind was a lot less. So we rested for a few hours before we went out again for another try. The weather was just as difficult, so we decided to stay the night at the anchorage.

It was interesting our short hop out in that our angles of tacks were exactly the same so, if we decided we were not making passage before then we certainly would not be making passage now.