We had a great night in the anchorage at Camas Tuath. Dinner was roast chicken with Mac and Cheese and helped to send me to sleep! An early night after a long day saying was well deserved and we went to bed before the kids playing at the Salmon Fishery buildings on their holiday camp had even stopped swimming. I was in bed and asleep before 10pm. I slept through to 06:30 with only a couple of transient loo visits watching the plankton glow.
There was one heavy rain storm during the night but it was mostly dry. The forecast for the day was 12-17 knots of wind, showers and heavily overcast so we dressed in storm suits and battened the hatches before we set off. The other boat which has shared the anchorage with us headed off shortly after 07:30 when I was just getting Linda her tea!
I put the heater on early to warm the place through for Linda getting up and I noticed that it was pulling between 10 and 16 Amps rather than its usual 2-6 Amps. It ran fine and switched off fine. (However when I tried to switch it on at the end of the day it was errored out with Error 3 – Glow Plug Short or Burned Out. No diesel heater of the remainder of the trip. Thank God its summer, and in future I bring the hot-spare with me!
The anchor lifted kindly with no mud, and little weed. Linda took her out of the anchorage under power as I set the foresail for a downwind foresail only run. We headed initially to Staffa and had a great view into Fingal’s Cave, then lots of little puffins all around us. Following this we stayed on a tingle tack all the way up, round the headland and into the Sound of Mull.
We crossed the Sound with boats everywhere! Into Loch Sunart there was a dive-boat at the entrance to Loch Na Drma Buidhe but he said we were good to head in. We kept an eye out and spotted the divers bubbles so avoided going directly over him.
In the Loch there were six boats anchored in the first two bays on the South-West. We headed towards the South East where we anchored in March. There was one boat anchored in the North East, it looked like the Van Der Statt that we met in Karrera on Saturday, but they were lifting their anchor as we entered the Loch.
We dropped in 8m (with a 4m rise expected) in the SE corner.
As mentioned above, the heater didn’t fancy working any more this holiday. But we did PTFE the rudder stock and check the wiring before we had showers and then I cooked a Chicken Casserole with apricots and boiled potatoes. It was very tasty, and the red wine, after the day in the cockpit went right to my head.
One other boat came in and anchored to the SW of us, far enough away Im not worried. The rain is coming down outside, we are wumfied up in 20C (warm enough) and I don’t see it being long before bed!
39 miles in 6.5 hours.