We were at Lamlash and our plan was to sail over to Troon to pick up some guests, namely my daughter Gemma and her partner Harry.
We were in Lamlash and although the mooring had started out fine, the wind had veered to an Easterly and what had been a good mooring was now incredibly bumpy. This resulted in us not getting that much sleep. Beverley tried several times to improve things but with no effect and I also had to get up as I don't like Beverley going forward on a pitching deck without being ready to help her in any way.
When Beverley went to start the engine she realised that we were a lot lower on diesel than we like. We had what we call a marginal tank. Now as people who do not like marginal situations we looked for a solution and soon found a guy from Johnston's marine came out with some diesel. It was 20litres, but it would be more than enough to do what we needed. So once we were all fuelled up it was time to slip the mooring and sail across to Troon.
We sailed most of the way but we were not sailing hard making just 3 knots, but with sailing its not really about speed it more about steady progress, so it might only be 3 knots, but it is three knots hour after hour. We got most of the way under sail, but we had to turn on the engine for the last bit so we were quite glad that we had bought the fuel earlier.
We got into Troon about tea time and we had only just finished our meal when my daughter Gemma turned up with her partner Harry. Gemma had done some sailing a long time ago when she had done her competent crew coarse and Harry had no experience what so ever, but the next day we made sure that Gemma and Harry who helped, so while Harry cleaned the prop with Beverley, Gemma cooked the curry for tea that night and prepared the boat for sea, closing seacocks and that kind of thing.
Once we were all prepared, it was time to slip the lines and we were off. We did quite a bit of sailing as we went up the Firth of Clyde and we saw quite a few porpoises which are always a welcome sight, but the hi-light of the trip was seeing a bottle nose dolphin. I have to say the bottle nose is so much bigger than the common dolphin, it was fantastic to see and I'm so glad that Gemma got to see it to. We were just coming into the stretch of water just before we came into Millport and Gemma knocked her life jacket on the spray hood and it accidentally went off. I was watching her when she did it and I heard a band and all of a sudden her life jacket was fully inflated. None of us could work out what she had done including Gemma. I'm afraid we all laughed at her predicament, and I made sure I filmed her before I showed her how to deflate the jacket using the release valve which is located as part of the top up tube.
We took one of the Millport moorings that night and had a good nights sleep, so that the next day we could take our intrepid explorers (Gemma and Harry) over to Millport so that they could explore. I took them across on the dinghy, but then it was such a nice day that I just stayed in the dinghy, rowing messing about. So, I met one of our followers and he recommended an overnight mooring at the Kames hotel, which is close to Tighnabruaich in the Kyles of Bute. I also looked at the mooring and what was under the mooring, like the chain and the concrete block at the bottom of the chain. Gemma and Harry was only staying for a short time, so after lunch we motor sailed all the way back to Troon where they had parked the car.
The next day we got ourselves all cleaned up and we we went to meet his parents. So after that we went back to Millport to relax and take a chill pill so that we had a few days off.
