We were in Lochaline and I decided to investigate making a storm sail. I had bought a cheep shower curtain in Oban and I decided to use this for my prototype. In my idea, I was thinking about using the spinnaker lines to rig the sail. Basically hank the sail on to the spinnaker hoist, then use the spinnaker halyard to lift the sail. Beverley, laughed at my idea as I tried it out. She wanted to know if I was going to use a loofah and some soap up there. I probably will for badness, or more likely she will. The only problem with using a shower curtain for a prototype was the little clips that I was using to test out the idea were not fit for purpose and kept being flung across the deck.
Soon the tide was just right for leaving Lochaline to go North. It was a motor, rather than a sail but seeing as it is not far between Lochaline and Tobermorey in Mull, we were soon at our destination.
We went into the marina, as we needed to get some shopping done and we had not left Salty Lass for a few days, so I needed to stretch my legs. Tobermorey was where they had filmed Balamory some time ago, but it was really nice with the shops all coloured. Tobermorey sported some great shops, with a good chandler and a hardware shop, that had beers and spirits in.
Once we had done the shopping and the washing, we moved Salty Lass out to a mooring ball as this was half the price of the pontoon. This meant that we needed to use Salty Sausage to explore. We decided to go and look at the Lord Nelson, a tall ship that looked beautiful from a distance, but needed a lot of work, once you looked at it close to. As we got around on Salty Sausage we were amazed by the number of jellyfish in the water. I'm afraid I might of chopped up one or two for which we are both sorry, but it was pretty difficult to not hit any. On the way back from seeing the Lord Nelson, it started to rain and Beverley and I laughed as the rain dripped off my nose.
The next day, we went for a walk along the local footpaths and enjoyed the view of the Lord Nelson as well as several waterfalls. We came along the road on the way back and we noticed that even the industrial units had been painted, which looked really good.
Soon it was time to leave, this time we went just a little bit further North to Loch Drambuie, where we at last dropped the anchor. Beverley was on the back and I was on the front, so I pulled up 20m of chain onto th deck, so that I could drop that quite quickly. This worked quite well, and Beverley used the chart plotter to mark where the anchor was. There was lots of little bits that we worried about, for me it was the scope, did we have enough chain for the depth or water that we had, while Beverley was just worried as this was the first time that we had done this year. It was good however putting on our anchor light for the use that it was intended for.
The next day, we did another anchorage and our technique improved, but it is far from perfect, however, it was better than last time.
