Wednesday 5 August castle bay to Loch Boisdale and Loch Boisdale to Loch carnan

What an eventful day! Particularly for our friends!

Our day started at 0520 ugh. It was bleak outside. Drissly with very poor visibility. At least the wind had dropped to a manageable level of 12 ish knots. Our aim was to set off by 7 to avoid the ferry which left at 8, and to in good time so T and S wouldn’t have to long to wait for us. Their plan was to get the plane from Glasgow to benbecula and then taxi to lochboisedale. Simple. However…………!

Back to our journey. We were rewarded for our early rise to be greeted by a pod of about 50 dolphins around our boat. They were having a wonderful time! Jumping, dashing around, flipping right out of the water like a salmon leaping, flipping over so you could see their pale bellies. It is always such a privilege to see. They play with the bow wave and dart under the boat and out the other side. They stayed with us for about 20 mins and even after we gybed onto a different course. Not sure when we heard as we didn’t have much signal; that the Phillps journey was in fact in two legs. The first to Stornaway and then onto benbecula. Unfortunately the plane had landed badly in Stornaway and damaged its steering 😳so couldn’t go any further without repair! Logan air were going to send a replacement plane…… sometime. Meanwhile poor Sue and Tim were in a dilemma. Should they abandon flying ( since it clearly wasn’t going well) and get a taxi, then a ferry and another taxi to meet us? Or wait for the next plane? Various arrangements undecided they then heard that the plane coming from Glasgow with the required part had developed a fault, so had had to turn back to Glasgow.! You really couldn’t make it up! Meanwhile we had no signal out at sea so they couldn’t communicate with us and we had got the sails down and tied up all smugly in locboisdale and settled down to wait… for about 30 minutes. Good WiFi there and signal so we’re able to have phone conversations and establish that it was going to be better if we met them further north as whatever was left of their journey… it was likely to take most of the day . Our destination had to have somewhere with a road to it so we settled on Loch Carnan which according to Tim possibly had some new pontoon s on it?????? And a power station…..with a road. We duly set off …. back to sea. Getting off the pontoon wasn’t easy as the wind was blowing us onto it, but we managed using one of Julian’s fancy “ springing the bow out” techniques, and off we set for another 15 miles to Loch carnan. Suddenly hoping that we had clarified the arrangements sufficiently…. I could just see us arriving in Loch Carnan and them getting a a taxi to lochboisedale. Confirmatory messages sent, we proceeded up the coast with the wind more or less behind us, flat water and a good breeze. I decided I needed a kip so left J to it for a couple of hours and snoozed in bed 🛌. Eventually we could see the red and white fairway buoy and followed the instructions in the pilot ( guide book) to enter the rock strewn Loch. Tim had managed to find out that there weren’t any pontoons but there were several big grey buoys that weren’t being used…….. at least he thought that that was what the man he’d found to talk to had meant…. . We picked our favourite a made a beeline for it. Got it with my boat hook and pulled it up together with a ton of seaweed and marine life! Nearly there! We launched the dinghy and fetched our friends from the slipway. It was lovely to see them heading towards the boat with big smiles of relief on all our faces! I had the gin and tonic waiting which was the start of a very enjoyable evening and holiday! Let’s hope they have brought some southern sunshine with them!

What I learned today………,……during the safety briefing ( for our visitors) that we have a hole under the cockpit decking that you can put a fire extinguisher through if you have an engine fire. Hopefully never needed 😳

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Sue x