A Good Day's Sailing

The words of warning of a fellow yachtsman have become a source of amusement onboard: "You should stay in Ballycastle (Northern Ireland) overnight". Well, I wonder where we would be if we had done that and not looked at the weather forecast and pushed into the night...

The night time sailing past Ballycastle through the North Channel and around the Mull of Kintyre on the Scottish side went extremely well. First motoring with the main up and then, after the wind picked up to between 15-20 kts the engine could be turned off and sails alone took us on at between 5 to 7 kts. It was a beautiful, clear night with stars etc. We split the crew into 2 watches and worked ourselves in 4 hour shifts through the night into a beautiful, sunny morning with nice wind between force 3 to 5. Dynamo, the 1st officer started his early morning shift by expertly hoisting the jib in fairly brisk wind and bumpy sea. Very energetic!

Rugged charm of the Scottish Isles and coastline. Lots of other boats out too. Passing through the Sound of Jura we saw the famous paddle steamer Waverley, full of tourists, going South as we were pushing North. Fuss the stand-in chef spoiled us with the cornucopia of provisions that had initially caused mild amusement. Well, nobody was complaining there was too much food now...well perhaps there is too much food, as Dynamo managed to break the toilet seat, talking some jibberish about things not having been made to be used at so and so many degrees of an angle. Well, the bowl is very much usable still.

Passing through the Sound of Luing and seeing the tidal swirl and experiencing the speed that it adds to the boats passage - when it is in your favour - was fascinating. The Baltic Boys don't really want the tide for their home waters but it is always an interesting experience.

We've done well but due to the lost time we will not go through the sea lock of the Caledonian Canal today. We'll arrive late at night and will pass as they open for business at 0800 tomorrow. We've been in touch with them and will call them on channel 74 as we approach.

Chief Engineer, alias Steven Spielberg, has had the video camera out and we others have taken a few still photos of each other and the scenery basking in sunlight. It is a hard life at sea. It is a beautiful sunny evening now and the wind has just dropped to the degree that we've had to turn on the Yanmar 27 that has been going really well so far. We even had a virtual toast for the 1500 ours of engine operation - a milestone that was passed today.

Navigating in Scottish waters is very straight forward and compared to the rocky Gulf of Finland there is a lot of space and depth. So far we've had winds to use jibs 2 and 3 but neither the spinnaker nor the storm jib - the latter we don't necessarily want to use either...