Reached Easdale Sound at 12.20 on Sunday and since this is exactly when Martin Lawrence says that the Cuan flood begins at springs and since it would have taken another 15 mins to get to the entrance and 15 more to get through (given slack water) I picked up the Easdale mooring and awaited the start of the ebb.
Realised quite quickly that we should have gone for it anyway and would have learned something even if we'd been spat back out the way we went in.
Lawrence says that the stream reaches it's greatest strength, seven knots, soon after turning and he also gives different timings for springs and neaps though I note that the esteemed Claymore does not so differentiate in his definitive guide to the tidal gates of the region.
What sort of liberties can I afford to take with The Venerable Yamaha (8hp) and what do you think would have happened if I'd gone ahead on Sunday?
I think you'd have been OK - I've always thought I'd bale out into the bay on the right if things got a bit hectic - there's also lots of back eddies around there which I think must be fun to play in.
I've gone through against the stream a few times - usually following some sort of cock up. You do tend to burn a lot of fuel to not go very far which, being a miserable sod, irks me. I haven't tried it at full springs though. If it's really running at 7 or 8 knots with the water sloping I don't think it could be done - certainly not in the middle of the channel. Sneaking up the side might work, but I'm a bit leery of the charting accuracy in that area (the latest version claims that you can pass the Cleit in more than 10m which we all know to be nonsense). On the other hand with a ground speed of 1 knot or less any impact shouldn't be too damaging, and there'd be no problem getting off again in the flooding tide... Maybe something to try one day!
I suppose I was really wondering how quickly the flow builds up after the supposed time of the turn and how accurate the predicted times are.
Silkie didn't swing round on the mooring at Easdale until 12.50 and the flood didn't seem to be significant until about 14.00, though Easdale Sound is obviously a kettle of a different colour to Cuan.
The latest (or to be strictly accurate, last year's revision of the chart as published in the first edition of the Leisure Folio) - had the contours redrawn to show over 10m past and eastwards of the Cleit. It's just possible that they've now corrected this for the 2nd edition, which I haven't seen since I'm reluctant to buy it given that it's predecessor is less than a year old and they're already talking about incorporating a whole lot of further changes in a further revision (t.b. issued maybe next year?) ...
