Overnight it was a crystal clear night with the stars shining like diamonds on black velvet. The village was bright across the bay and the commercial pontoon ended up busy with four big boats tied up on it.

This morning we woke early to the sound of big diesels as one after another they headed out of the Bay. Once they were gone we went back to sleep for a short while then had a relaxed time and started the morning with a good long shower in the harbour offices. Back on Misha I was getting everything sorted for the day when I spotted the Harbour Master towing in a motor boat that had suffered battery issues while out on the mooring. I lent a hand to catch ropes and get it tied up safe.

There was a gentle SSE breeze as we prepared Misha for departure. We wanted to top up the water tank and there was no water on the leisure pontoons, only on the commercial pontoon, so we needed to jump over to it and fill up. The good news was, that all the big boat had left and it was an easy task to tie up and fill the tank.

All filled up, we motored out of the Bay and raised full sail. We had a cracking reach across the top of the Sound of Mull to the entrance to Loch Sunart. As expected, the wind dropped and died as we came into the lee of Morvern. We spotted a seal surface swimming and a few minutes later an otter came to check on us, then ten minutes later we had a sea eagle (white tailed eagle) flying alongside us for a few minutes.

We motored past Loch Drumbuie and onwards past Carna onwards to Salen. Motoring into Salen we went onto the outer pontoon and went up to the cafe. A quick call with the jetty owners confirmed we could stay overnight if we wanted to, they offered to turn on the power and the water for us. But we wanted to head on so we stayed only for a short stay.

The Jetty Cafe and Shop served us a delightful lunch of locally produced chicken and ham pie with a side salad followed by lemon and lime drizzle cake. The shop was so well stocked with local produce we decided to have an extra shop and bought venison for tomorrow along with local veggies to make a casserole. Tonight we planned the steak pie we bought in Tobermory.

We headed off and continued east along Loch Sunart. I left Linda on the helm and stitched and wrapped the port reefing line and Linda took us through the first set of rock-dodging. We passed a large country house with deer in the front garden and a boathouse with pontoon and visitors moorings. Then went through the next narrows.

At Port a’Chalhuin we checked out our fall-back anchorage. It was quite deep at 10m (plus 4m tide) but it was good enough as a fall-back for us. We motored onwards past Strontium to the very head of the loch and then did a quick survey. We noted that the drying area had extended further than charted but we still had loads of room to anchor in 5m (plus 4m tide). We let out 38m of chain and got ourselves settled comfortably.

At anchor we had good 4G connection and were able to update out weather forecasts and phone the ancestors and let them know what we were up to. Linda sat out enjoying the spring sunshine and I disassembled the AIS finding the arial cable faulty and also stitched and wrapped the starboard reefing line. I did it far better then the port one I did earlier but managed to pull the thread through my left middle finger and also put the sailmakers needle right through my thumb. Once finished I cleared up the blood!

Now, at five to six, we are sitting inside with the oven cooking pie, potatoes and stuffed mushrooms for dinner and raising the saloon temperature incidentally. Its really cold outside now, the air temp has dropped to circa 5c already but we are planning on staying nice and ‘womfy’ inside with the heating going on once the oven stops warming us.

Another cracking day!