Two go Sailing

As the weather was still stuck in autumn/winter mode we spent the evening in Oban poring over charts of the west coast of Scotland and all of the exciting places that we could visit. We quickly realised that it would take many weeks and much better weather to see even a small part of this wonderful cruising area so compromises would have to be made. We decided that having come this far we should take the boat to Skye or it would be something that we would regret in the future but that we would not be able to do much more than that without making the decision - as some of our other cruising friends have done - to spend the rest of the summer here, leave the boat in a yard somewhere over the winter and then return next spring to complete the circuit. After some thought we decided that this was not what we had planned and however enticing we needed to press south by the end of July. We were also aware that we had to return home for a week or so mid July to keep up with some mundane thing

Leaving the lock at Corpach we moved out into the tidal waters of Loch Linnhie. Although not sunny it was at least dry and a lovely F4 blowing down the lock. We set the sails for a run down the loch towards Port Appin.  It was good to be back at sea and use wind power rather than diesel power. Our plan for the next couple of days was to sail down to either Port Appin or possibly on to Dunstaffnage spend the night there and then on to Oban the following day. The passage to Port Appin took us close inshore between the mainland and Lismore Island. We had been told by another crew on their way into the canal that the Pier Hotel in Port Appin had some good mooring bouys in the bay which were free to use if we ate in the hotel - and that the meals in the hotel were extremely good. As we approached Port Appin we spotted a number of the yellow bouys vacant and as the wind was in the right direction meaning the bay was nice and sheltered we picked one up and chugged ashore in our little rub

After a day in Inverness a trip to the chandlers to pick up some charts and pilot books and the supermarket to stock up we set off on an overcast morning into the canal. The Clachnaharry sea lock into the canal is only about 20 minutes from Inverness Marina but the tides around the entrance and under the bridge cannot be ignored even over this short distance; equally the lock will not open at low water so we left the marina at about 8am. Locks are not something we do a lot of although we have been through quite a lot in Holland and of course there is are the locks at Shotley and Ipswich so we are not complete novices. The lock keeper at the sea lock (and indeed all of the lock keepers along the canal) was very helpful taking our lines as we entered the lock and releasing them once the locking process was complete. Once we were in the lock and had paid for our license we had a short wait for the ScotRail train to cross the bridge before we were off straight into our second lo