We had finally got past Ardnamurchan point and it's lighthouse, which needed a lick of paint in my opinion. It was the same colour as the rock it stood on, so did not particularly stand out. The weather was calm so it was a motor up to the anchorage on Muck. I was on the helm that day, so it was my decision that I did not like the anchorage. The sides of the loch were steep to and covered in weed, so I decided that I would look at the other anchorage on the north coast of Muck, this anchorage was much more to my liking so this is where we dropped the hook in sand. The anchorage was a great wee spot and we could hear the sound of seals singing.
From Muck, we motored up to Rum and just at the entrance to the anchorage at Rum, we picked up some wind, so we decided to carry on and sail over to Canna. We were doing really well, but as we started to clear the headland so that we could see Canna, we saw a fog bank approaching, and it was going at quite a clip, so we turned around and went into Rum. There were some nice visitor moorings and a floating pontoon that we could tie up against so quite good facilities to be fair. The date however was a Sunday, so everything apart from the craft shop was closed, the road was a dirt track and the hotel on Rum had seen some better days. However it would be a great place for one of those destination weddings.
The next day was a motor over to Canna, seeing the wreck of the Jack Abry II on the coast of Rum. Piloting into the anchorage at Canna was quite straight forward initially as there was a leading line on the chart as well as two lights, that although were off we could still see the triangular boards that accompanied the lights. According to the pilotage there was another leading line that could be made from some cottages, but with so many cottages, to choose from, it was difficult to find so I just used the mooring balls themselves, staying well clear of the reef near the ferry terminal.
When we picked up the mooring our depth was reading 1.9m and we came in 2 hours below low tide. Now, the range in the small isles was 4.1m, so on I increased that to 4.2 so that each 1/12 was 0.35m, As we came in two hours before low water, then we would have 3/12ths in total so a drop of 1.05m in total. So that would leave us with 0.85m of depth. So we decided to wait until low tide to make sure that everything was alright. In the end we had more water under us than my calculation and that was mainly caused by the fact that when I took the 1.9m reading we actually had 1h 40mins before low tide. Now 20mins different does not sound like a lot, but because the way the tide works that is nearly 0.25m more depth which is what we saw. If we had come in at 2hours and 20minutes however we would of been really stuck.
Once we khew that we were on a rising tide we took our drone out so that we could see Canna from the air. We managed to get some fantastic shots of the beech going towards Compass hill, the anchorage where we were and the other anchorage on the other side of the causeway. We managed to get permission to charge our drone back up while we had a drink, So we had a wee drop of Askival Rum which is blended on Rum.
After our walk, we went back to Salty Lass where we had bacon and sausage to represent Muck, which is an old word for pig, an egg for Eigg, we had the rum earlier, so we chose a canna of mushrooms to represent Canna, it was a bit of a laugh but is was the perfect way to celebrate our trip to the small isles.
The next day, we decided to stay one more day, as it would be a motor, that day, while the day after would be sailable.
