Thursday 29 July. Carradale bay via Lochranza to Portavadie. 26 nm

We had decided to go to Portavadie in Loch fyne for our overnight stop. We had never been before and were curious. It’s a new (few years old) marina and built inside an old quarry on the east side of Loch fyne. We had thought of getting the little ferry over to Tarbert for the afternoon/ evening but timing was dodgy so we did that bit differently in the end. Firstly we weighed anchor and set off to call in at Lochranza for a lunch stop. Sue had a colleague whose parents had a house there so she was keen to see it. Amazingly she texted her freind and she was in residence so came out to wave at us with her newborn baby! Her husband works in whiskey so we may have to pop in again! as sadly we didn’t have enough time to get ashore this time. Entering portavadie is odd as inside the water is completely still?? You go in between two concrete posts and subsequently found a space on the long leg of visitors pontoon. It was quite a long way to walk to the office but J came back finding he’d forgotten to pick up the electricity card we needed to get shore power from the pontoon bollard. Sue and I went to fetch it and check out the posh showers etc . The electricity card wouldn’t go in like it should so off we went back to office. J and TP had by this time gone for very protracted showers which turned out to be near the bar! Anyway still couldn’t get the electricity to work and the office people didn’t seem to know how to solve it. However some very kind neighbors allowed us to borrow electricity from them by using their splitter ( like a gang plug). The restaurant looked very nice but busy and pricy so we ate on board and played bridge. Sue x

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