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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Fuel problems and a little drama

After a windy night in Loch Tarbert we set out for Mull and the second drama in 10 days! An hour out the wind died completely so we started to engine. It wasn’t long before it died. I have a problem with polluted fuel that I am in the process of dealing with that involves adding chemicals to the tank, the pollution gets dissolved and gets caught in the fuel filters. The downside is that the filters soon get blocked and need changing regularly  it seemed that the bug had beaten me to it, no matter, change the filters, an operation I have performed several times and off we go again; sadly it wasn’t that simple. Having changed the filters I couldn’t get the fuel to come through, the little hand pump was pumping fresh air and I didn’t know why. Now we had a problem, no wind, no engine and drifting ½ mile off a rocky shore. Time to call the cavalry. I put out a call to the coastguard on the radio, no answer, the had some big hills between us and him and VHF radio is line of sight, the problem just got bigger. However, over the horizon sailed our saviour in the form of a big square rigged sailing ship, Stavros Emarcos (which I think is the ship I took my sister Jenny on for a day for her 50^th birthday!).

Not only could I call her but she would probably have an engineer on board. I did and they did! They put him in a boat and sent him over while they stood by. It took us half an hour but he did get the engine going, showing me how to prime the pump to help the fuel through and left with profuse thanks. Sadly that wasn’t the end of the tale; within 10 minutes the engine had died again. By this time the wind was back up and we were heading the same way as the Stavros so we sailed in company while I tried again with the engine again and again and again, 5 times I got it started as the engineer had showed me and then died again, I was now scratching my head and more than a little concerned.

The engineer had misdiagnosed the problem. After much head scratching, discussion with Rob (who had taken the helm through all this) and sucking of diesel by mouth to determine where I had fuel flow and where I did not (the taste was repeating on me for many hours afterwards!) I dismantled the fuel filtration system (something I should have thought of from the start but then hindsight is a wonderful thing) and found a blob of black gunge in the pipe connection to the filter housing. Now that could be the problem! Start her up again, cross fingers and wait. 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10, 15 – we had cracked it and with a major sigh of relief headed for Mull and a very large dose of  wine!

We anchored overnight in Loch Spelve on the east coast of Mull. The entrance to the loch is a narrow channel, about half way in we nearly ran over a sea otter who quickly swam out of our way rolled onto his back and gave us the eye whilst chomping on whatever was for tea held in his mouth. The loch is full of mussel farms so we collected our mussel scrumping gear and had a large bowl of fresh mussels to help our large dose of wine on its way; everything was looking better with the world!

Saturday was another windy damp day. We sailed over to Oban in the now standard issue force 6 and went ashore for supplies and to pick up David Munden, my next crew member. 

Isle of Man to Jura

Rob and I had another windswept trip to Ireland in a force 6 arriving at a Lough north of  Belfast after a chilly 8 hours. The following day the winds veered northerly so rather than fight a headwind we stayed put and had a day in Belfast. We did the Titanic museum and a bus tour centered mostly around the areas of the Troubles. Although Belfast is a run down city having had no investment for the 30 years of the troubles on the grounds that your investment would get blown up the are now few signs of those troubled times; I saw much more evidence in Londonderry last year. The only remaining monument to the troubles is a 'peace wall' built between a catholic and protestant area to stop them hurling missiles at each other. It still remains because the residents still feel safer with it up than down.



Belfast brought us our first sunshine, breakfast in the cockpit no less! A sign of things to come? No such luck! Our force 6 came back with a vengence and is still with us nearly a week later although we have had our share of sunshine thrown in.
The next leg was up the coast to the top of Ireland, past the beautiful Mull of Kintyre and on to a stop at Rathlin island where we were greeted by a flock of beautiful Eider ducks (as in Eider down)




From Rathlin to Islay and our first taste of Scotland, the Laphroag distillery (there are a total of 7 on the island!).The trade mark of the island whiskys is that the barley is smoked with smoke from peat fires, you could taste the smoke throughout the process and certainly in the finished product, many varieties of which were tasted! Sadly it doesn't do it for me; it tastes like it would make good toilet cleaner but its a tad expensive at £35 to £230 per bottle! My sister Caroline (something of a whisky fan) is now the proud owner of one square foot of the Laphroag estate for which she gets rent of one small bottle of whisky, but you have to go and collect it in person!

This years rent is partly consumed, a necessary part of establishing Caroline's new real estate!

 

We left Islay for Jura after our whisky session (force 6!) and were joined for half an hour by a couple of dolphins, beautiful creatures.

And here is another not quite so graceful creature fully dressed for battle; there is no such thing as bad weather as long as you've got good gear!

 Islay and its neighbour Jura are very harsh and barren. Heather, peat bog and rock make up the entire islands, and some very big hills! 

There were some beautiful views from the top.

Moondance back on tour

Moondance is back on tour for the second leg of my adventure. The plan this year is to head up to Scotland via Islay, Mull and Skye to the Hebrides and the Western Isles, hopefully up to the Faroes and back down to the Shetland and Orkney Isles wintering at the northern tip of Scotland. Scotland has its best weather in May and June so I have made an early start to get up there before the midges and rain become rampant; we will see!
I had a lot of work over the winter catching up on the several years of maintenance that had not been done that caused me so much trouble last year. The toilets and all associated pipework have been removed, cleaned, serviced, pipes changed and replaced for a trouble free, non toilet cupboard yoga year. We will see about that too. I had a lot of trouble with leaking rudder seals last year so whilst she was on the hard at Holyhead I took out the rudders and replaced the seals. That blue thing on the ground to the left of the boat is one of the rudders!

I arrived at Holyhead with Olly, my youngest son, on Wednesday last week planning to leave for the Isle of Man the following day. We woke at 6 on Thursday  morning to a howling northerly wind and a heavy drizzle and promptly stuck our heads back under the covers. By lunch time the wind had dropped and the sun had come out so I took Olly out for a spin round the bay to show him how yachting should be done. Beer in one hand and fishing rod in the other he decided he rather like this life! Sadly the fish did not bite.

Friday morning we had a spanking westerly wind and headed for the Isle of Man, 8 hours sail away. We pulled into the southern end of the island at about 5 o'clock and settled down to as quiet an evening as the force 6 wind would allow, or so we thought. Our calm was shattered an hour later when the anchor started to drag, a first once the anchor has dug in. Two more attempts proved fruitless, a rocky bottom I think so we went to pick up a mooring and the fun really started. The mooring was close to the shore and to avoid any danger I approached with more speed than I would have liked. I overshot the mooring, turning away from the shore to avoid any trouble and somehow ended up with a longer than usual mooring strop under the boat. No problem, go into neutral and drift away. Perfect until we came to a halt with the stern to wind and the mooring behind us. The strop had gone under the hull and snagged my starboard rudder, we were moored by the rudder! Well, a little embarrassing but remarkable effective! It took us the next hour to extricate ourselves, removing the strop that was now jammed between the top of the rudder and the hull. The second attempt was more succesfull and we finally got a peaceful night.
On Saturday Olly took the bus to Douglas and got the ferry home; my cousin Rob was inbound on the same ferry to join me for the next leg.

Crab, basking sharks and giants, its been quite a few days! Now the wind is back it continues to dog me although the weather has been fantastic; as I went north the winds were  northerly, now I am going east they are easterly and tomorrow as I head south, well, you guessed it! Still, I am sitting out in the cockpit as I write this at 8 o'clock in the evening supping a glass of fine brandy left by Chris, it ain't that bad! Indeed, I have had more sunshine in the last few days than the whole of the rest of the trip put together!

On thursday evening  I left Derry and  anchored in a pretty little bay where there were some fisherman coming in from the days crabbing. I rowed over to ask them if I could buy a crab for tea; I came away with a monster and they wouldn't take a bean! I looked up on the internet to see how long to cook the crab for and it gave a tip as to how to cook him in a more humane way than just dunking him in boiling water. You hold him above the water, stroke his head until he falls asleep then lower him gently into the boiling water- yeh right!!

On Friday I continued east heading for the north east corner of Ireland. I had heard that this was basking shark country; they are a very large shark but harmless as the eat plankton, scooped up in their huge mouths as the whales do and they did not let me down - they are HUGE!! The dorsal fin is very un-shark like, more like a dome than a fin, so large it cannot support itself and flops about (it rather goes with the whole cuddly image of the basking shark which at worst could suck you to death!) It sticks about 2' out of the water.

This  photo doesn't show the fin very well, it has flopped over to the side so looks a little more shark like! I saw 3 altogether, one fairly small at about 15' long the other two about 25' and 30' respectively, that 3/4 of the length of my boat!!! This fellow past right down the side of the boat about 3' away, all very exciting!

This morning I set of at 7 to beat the crowds at the Giants Causeway, a rather extraordinary rock formation caused by basalt shooting up through the earths crust umpteen million years ago. As the basalt solidifed it did so into columns that are (nearly) all polygons, pretty wacky! The call it the Giants Causeway because it forms a bit of a path out to sea and is said to be the causeway the Irish Giant took to go and see his girlfriend in Scotland where ther is a similar causeway coming out of the sea!

There was I!

This afternoon I bashed another 30 miles east in an increasingly strong wind; at force 6 beating becomes pretty hard work!
Tomorrow I head around the north east corner heading south east for home (you guessed the wind direction). I have been able to see Scotland clearly for the past few days; Islay and the Mull of Galloway have been quite clear. Tomorrow I head down the channel between Ireland and Scotland, the Mull of Kintyre is only 15 miles from the Irish coast! I may not have the wind with me but if I time it right I will have a ripping tide of about 3 knots with me; 3 knots (nautical miles per hour) doesn't sound much but when you're only travelling at 6kts it make quite a difference!
My adventure is coming to a close now, tonight I am 130miles from Holyhead (as the crow flies, not necessarily as the boat sails!). There is an Easterly gale coming in on wednesday so I want to get back before it comes in. I am picking up James Bailey, a friend from Rhosneigr, tomorrow night in Belfast. He will do the last 2 days with me, one further day south down the coast then the hop back over the Irish sea to Holyhead. And so the Irish adventure ends! I will sign off now. Thank you for reading. I know most of those who have been following us but in case I have missed you do please drop me a line at jeffwrinch@btinternet.com and let me know, it's always nice to know who is out there. I very much hope to continue the adventure next year.
Jeff

What a place of contrast. Derry, as its know to everybody here but known as Londonderry to the Nationalists and to us in England, epitomises the catholic v's protestant, Irish v's English struggles of the last 500 years. The city's medieval walls enclose an attractive, affluent staunchly protestant population whilst just outside the walls to the west is the now infamous, run down, poor, catholic Bogside area, so named because it was built on the boggy banks of the River Foyle and is to where catholics were banished  since inception of the city.
All the way round Ireland we have been learning of the dreadful oppression of the Catholics by the English protestant intruder who, although arriving much earlier, really started to rule the island about 500 years ago when catholics were regarded as no better than animals and treated as such. In the last 100 years catholics have risen from animals to second class citizens, it is no wonder that things erupted the way they did in the '70's. There is an awful lot here that doesn't make one proud to be English.

Since 'The Troubles' settled down things have returned to normal here, mostly. The police station still looks like this, police drive round in armoured landrovers, when on the streets they carry automatic weapons and houses on the short walk up the hill from the Bogside to the city walls still have mesh shutters over them.

'The Troubles' are recorded as 'Bogside Art'  in the area of the Bogside where all the riots took place (most notably 'Bloody Sunday' in 1972) . Entire gable ends of houses are painted with scenes such as these:-

Free Derry is a slogan painted on a house here as long ago as 1960 and refers to the area being 'free' from firstly RUC and then the English army. The Bogside became a 'no go' area for the authorities in 1970, kept out by manned barricades. There are commerative plaques on the walls of houses, one I saw in memory of a 4 year old boy killed by a rubber bullet fired by a British soldier.

Lest they forget.

Back on board fit and well! The trip to the hospital gave a positive result so I was able to head out to the sun with the right drugs finally. A week on the antibiotics, sun and plenty of rest has done the trick happily; the infection has gone and my chest is almost cleared up so I am now back on the boat for the final leg. Paul had other things to do so I am currently on my own but a friend of mine from Rhosneigr may join me in a few days.
I picked up the boat from Sligo on Friday, a little sooner than planned but the winds were due to die for a week so I grabbed the opportunity to get round to the north of Ireland before they did drop, the wind was however northerly and so against me. 3 days sailingand 100 miles later I am in a beautiful sea loch called Loch Swilly, 10 miles from Derry (also known as Londonderry) in County Donegal; what a beautiful place. The wind has now died for a few days and the sun is out so I am heading out on my trusty bike tomorrow to explore the hinterland!