A little more wind and a little more drama

Rob left us on Sunday morning in beautiful sunshine; Dave and I set sail back for Mull in 12 knots of wind, things were looking up, but not for long, this is Scotland! Half an hour out the rain started and the wind picked up. We went back to Lock Spelve from where we planned to take the bikes ashore and do some exploring, in particular taking a look at a couple of castles. We dropped anchor and the scene was set for the next little drama. By 6pm the wind was gusting down the glen at the head of the lock at 30-40 knots (force 8)  with the boat doing her usual dance around her anchor in these conditions. I then noticed a change in motion and looked out of the window, oh dear, we were now in the middle of the lock and moving at a knot or so towards a lee shore, not good. Foul weather gear donned (yes, this is Scotland, it was raining) we picked up the anchor to try again. This was very worrying; you really do have to have absolute faith in your anchor. We had sat out 3 gales in Ireland last year without ever dragging and yet this was the second time in a week in the Scottish lochs, something is different here. We dropped the anchor again without success, picked it up and tried again in much shallower waters. This time the anchor never even tried and on pulling up the anchor we found we had picked up a shed load of weed and a pretty hefty branch from a sunken tree which was going to take some removing; to all intents and purposes we now had no anchor until we could get to the bow in the dinghy to sort the mess and that was not going to happen that night! Fortunately there were several moorings nearby which, judging by the size of the mooring lines were made for some serious vessels, the mussel boats I suspect. It was quite a drama even trying to pick up the rope from the bouy in 40 knot gusts of wind, it took us half an hour to pick up a rope and secure ourselves.

The following morning I went to chat up a couple of other yachts that had also been at anchor about the anchoring problems I had experienced . They were locals and said the problem was the Scottish loch mud which does not give the holding power of sand or good thick estuary ooze and the solution was a seriously over sized anchor and even more chain than the 40 metres I carry, so, off we trotted to find a seriously over sized anchor from a chandlery 4 hours sail away.

Double whammy, they had the required seriously over sized anchor and it was a very pretty place (AND the local pub did a very fine ale and dinner!) The shiny anchor on the right of the two is the new one, 33kg against my old one at 20kg and rated to take a boat 30% bigger than Moondance,  overkill makes for a good nights sleep! As well as the extra weight it has a much bigger surface area and a better shape to dig into the mud. The front of the boat needed a small adjustment  to take said seriously over sized anchor (being seriously over sized) but now, I hope, we are set for some evenings without added excitement!
The small adjustment turned into 2 days worth of adjustment, removing the whole anchor carrier from the front of the boat and getting the marina's fabricator to weld on some new cheeks to lower the roller.

On Thursday 9 May we set out again to resume our adventure with the now regarded as friendly force 6 behind us and taking us between the islands at a cracking pace up to Tobemory at the north end of the island and it hardly rained! 

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