We had left Troon and we managed to sail across the Firth of Clyde to Arran and a town called Lamlash which is just behind a small island called Holy island which gets its name because of St. Molaise a martyr who contracted a load of diseases then went into a cave to die. Beverley joked that this was Anthrax island, but I'm afraid that is the level of Beverley's jokes. When we were there we did not see Lamlash at its best because it was Lashing it down. We did find that it had a small marine preservation area between Holy Island and the land which is good news as far as Beverley and I are concerned. As we walked along the sea front, the weather started to clear a little and we could at last see the top of Holy island and the gap between the island and the larger island of Arran. While we explore various places we usually buy essentials like milk, and while we were in the shop, I saw some Arran ice-cream, which was really nice.
When we came back to the Lass we realised that Beverley had switched off the fridge by mistake, so she had to get everything out to defrost the fridge properly. It is surprising just how much stuff we can store in our little fridge and because we have loads of boxes that stack on top of each other, we seam to get more food in our little fridge than we do in our old one, back in the days when we had a house.
As we were on a mooring ball we put the engine on as this is the only that we can keep the batteries topped up. We do have some small solar panels on the top, but these are really only good enough when you are not drawing any power from them and we have the fridge running every day, all day.
Later Beverley cooked tea, while I used the spare dry mat that we had left over, from sorting out our V-berth in the bottom of the lockers, this will be particularly useful for keeping my splicing bag nice and dry. While I was under the bunks I shared with our audience the solution we use on the Lass for not wasting space behind the seats and that is to use thermal bags, these add a small layer of insulation to the Lass and it allows us to store stuff like blankets behind the seats. Also if we do need more space then we can move the bags to get a larger bunk.
The next day. it was time to move on and the weather was calm but raining. We did think that we might need to turn back because of poor visibility but it was sufficient to see, so we motored on to the bottom of Arran, then we were able to get the sails out at last and sail to Cambeltown. While we were sailing we used our boom preventer for the first time on this trip. It was clear that there was a few things that we didn't think about, for example you have to go forward on the leeward side, which can be very dangerous and for that reason alone I would not recommend a boom preventer to a solo sailor, for them maybe a boom brake would be better.
Despite the efforts of the mist to obscure Cambeltown we found the entrance to the harbour quite easily. the only issue is that the red buoys in the channel are sloped and not can shape enough. It was alright for us in the daylight, but when visibility is poor, it could be an issue. We took up a mooring as they were already rafting 4 deep at the marina and the only mooring that had strops was a little bit of overkill, with a bridal arrangement on the buoy, it must get really bouncy on the mooring if a bridal is required.
The next day, all the boat that were rafted had gone off, so we were able to get into Cambeltown to buy some fuel, send postcards and get rid of rubbish. Once I had bought the fuel, Beverley filled the tank using the jiggy hose which is a self priming syphon. An absolute must have on any sail boat.
