This may seem a very short journey but our reason was to get supplies from Craighouse and top up water etc. Also there’s forecast a 30 kt +blow from the north west and before that rain and poor visibility. Not a great forecast for going a long way, even though our temptation was to get further north before the wind changed direction.There have always plenty of visitors moorings just off the pier and the famous Jura distillery. As we’d been at anchor a few days, Julian fancied a night when he could get a decent nights sleep. So we left lowlandmans bay as it was starting to rain and headed south Down the sound of Jura. As it wasn’t far and the wind was against us we just motored the few miles. Arriving into the bay we were disappointed to see that all the visitors moorings had gone ! Presume Covid is to blame but can’t really see why, as maintaining moorings in the sea is likely to be pretty easy to do social distancing?!?🤔 we had no choice but to anchor . It was miserable and wet. 2 others had anchored nearby and a 4 th blue hulled boat came in soon after us.
Although rainy and very poor visibility to begin with the sea state was pretty calm for a while and we even saw one chap row ashore. We did some jobs… we were thinking of going to the shop but it was so miserable we decided to abandon that plan. I even washed my hair to make the most of the hot water created by motoring. We sat and discussed “next few days “ plans And celebrated the fact that Alice has finally completed on her house and has the keys!!Julian cooked yummy sausage beans and spuds. We were aware the wind was getting up…. as forecast. Cold front having gone through and wind direction changed to Northerlies with clearing skies. About 9 pm the wind was getting really strong and suddenly We noticed outside the shorescape was changing quickly. Our anchor was dragging and it was all hands on deck. I had just started to do the washing up…….. the wind was gusting over 30 kt and it was really hard to keep the boat going in the desired direction without being blown sideways. I was pretty scared. I had to have the throttle hard on to make any way whilst J tried to retrieve and clean the anchor which was now covered in weed. We noticed that one of the other boats also had a problem but he looked like he was alone on his boat and eventually after several tries at re-anchoring, he set off into the dusk in a very lumpy sound of Jura. I do hope he found shelter soon. I had noticed a dorsal fin approaching his boat at the beginning of the mayhem and a few minutes later a few of them (Dolphins) were next to us. Maybe they were just being nosy but it felt like they were there to help to lend moral support… that’s what I like to believe! Once we had successfully anchored further up the Loch, they disappeared……. who knows, but I was grateful to them. I had been having to use the engine at full throttle so the vague burning smell I thought might be that until I realised a sort of smoke from the saloon and in the nick of time realised the smell was coming from the cooker and the pan of water I’d been boiling for washing up. It had just boiled dry by the time I turned it off😱 . We sat for a long time watching day turn to night and listened to the gale around us gusting up to 33 kt. You don’t normally get white water in anchorages! We focused on transits to show us if the anchor was holding and J put out most of our 70 m of chain. I eventually went and got some rest but Julian stayed up all night. It’s still blowing and is forecast to do so for the next 24 hours ☹️
What I learned today……. always only use the whistling kettle ( with the whistle down) to boil water in. You just never know what’s going to happen……Sue x
Angelique 