BLUEMOMENT

It's good to hear that you're safely round Paul McCartney's country estate. You didn't hang around in Tarbert for long. Think that you'll need to motorsail for a few more days. Lets hope that the sunny days return. Enjoy your holiday.

Ash

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"This is a sailing Forum"

WOA are having a meet in Port Ellen, is that important enough? I hope we can get into the marina before Saturday night or we won't be going to the meal.

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Chiron: Westerly Centaur.
Cheers Bob.

Stuffed on a few counts. The alternator is out of the boat again, but has been declared healthy after a fuse-blowing incident. Hopefully I'll get it back in again today, and get a crate of bigger fuses!
Mattress being delivered at beginning of week, so might as well stick around for the jubilee barbecue and garden party.
Will be going round Mulligans Tyre next week if the gribs portend in our favour.

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Just because you're paranoid
doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Presently and pleasantly at anchor in Loch Bharcasaig (Skye) after meanders that have taken in Ardmore Bay (Mull), Tarbert Bay (Canna, btw, a really nice anchorage in a northerly), Loch Sgioport/Skipport, and Kallin harbour. Quite pleasant on the whole, sunny but a bit chilly, with occasionally boisterous winds.

Just enjoying a post-BBQ grape juice+ after the Westerly Owner's Association meet in Port Ellen. A very convivial and social group of people who seem to enjoy a glass of wine.

No- I've never heard of sailors drinking before, either.

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Great - we've hauled out Chiron in the coldest March for 50 years

Don't ever go to Port Ellen, it's 'orible. The beaches aren't white and sandy, it isn't picturesque, and there aren't any distilleries worth visiting on Islay.

A bloke has just piped down the sun too, we are stopping a few days it's so bad.

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Chiron: Westerly Centaur.
Cheers Bob.

Just back from a whistle stop tour or N.Ireland taking in Glenarm, Belfast,Bangor,Ballycastle and stopped at Lamlash last night. What a terrible decision that was. Wind on the nose all the way to Ardrossan this morn and what a wind it was!!!. Saw mister and misses Ash this morn they were heading from Lamlash to Troon. I'll bet they regretted that one.
From one of the best days sailing yesterday in wall to wall sunshine and flying the spinnaker all the way from Ballycastle to Sanda to one off the worst trips this morn from Lamlash to Ardrossan.

You bet! Motoring dead into the wind and waves was very slow - sailing would have taken us too far off course - stuck at it for about 5 mls then decided to divert to Largs. A rag of headsail plus the engine gave us good speed but some of the breaking waves were pretty big. I was a bit concerned that the engine might be starved of oil during some a the wallowing rolls, but hopefully the deep sump takes care of that.

Made the mistake of towing the Avon inflatable. It has a nice rise to the bow but this makes it dive very impressively when it flips while underway. Mrs Ash had to cope with the helm whilst I dragged it into the cockpit and deflated it.

Safely into Largs where we met a fellow Vega owner.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. We're on board till Tuesday.

Ash

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"This is a sailing Forum"

Port Ellen is only a maltings now, but the anchorage at Lagavulin is pretty spectacular if you can get in round the ragged rocks.

I agree, Lagavulin is good. There are two free VBs as well as some anchoring space. I picked up one of the VBs last year. The other was occupied by a Norwegian boat that had thumped its keel on a rock coming in. The hull had delaminated at the aft end of the keel so it must have been quite a wallop.

The distillery tour is good, and quite interactive: you can taste samples of malt, wort, etc. The optional warehouse tour is very good - and includes a rather nice Glencairn nosing / tasting glass to keep.

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Returning to the original topic, I'm planning to set off tomorrow for a poke about at some new anchorages with the assistance of the 2012 version of Antares Charts. Ardencaple Bay / Puilldobhraoin and Loch Don are two possibilities for tomorrow night. Not sure after that: Thursday's forecast is pretty poor so I plan to get back to Craobh on Wednesday. Monday night maybe somewhere in Loch Sunart? Plans are flexible and always happy to meet up with others...

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I'm just back I'm afraid and don't get out for another fortnight but what a great weekend up here - apart from having been unable to escape the jubilee shenanigans. Touching wood frantically as I type but it hasn't yet rained on me this season nor have I had to reef. I would have needed a reef this morning except... No, I think I'll start another thread.

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we are star dust

Turned cloudy today, but what a run of fabulous weather over the last couple of weeks. We're at Tobermory and thinking of catching the evening tide down to Loch Aline.

We are currently sitting in Karrera and I have just shown the Galley Slave how to program the sat-nav program OpenCPN for Loch Aline. Saw DaveS this morning in Craobh single-handling his boat very well.

Not much wind for Seminole - had to motor most of the way. Cuan really giddy!

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Chiron: Westerly Centaur.
Cheers Bob.

Well I had an enjoyable few days poking about in new anchorages. The highlight was Loch Don which I wouldn't have attempted without the new Antares chart. Bob (Aquaplane) tells me that he did it with Lady S in the bows directing procedings, which, given crew, sounds a very sensible approach. Because I can't rely on my PC setup for Antares - it drops out occasionally - I derived a list of waypoints from the Antares chart and set them up on the chartplotter. (This took even longer than it should have since I had to convert most of them from mins, secs to decimal mins before discovering that the mapping software I run Antares on could be set to display decimal minutes too... ) On the way in I also ran the FLS with its alarm sounding almost continuously.

Two consecutive nights in Puildobhraoin, one quite quiet, the next quite busy. Met Nick there who was running a skippered charter on a GMB (great muckle boat). The following day I helped him park it on a Craobh finger berth about 60% the length of the GMB then joined them in the pub for pints and dinner.

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