Heading Home

Thursday night was quite blowy and noisy in the marina but we had a reasonable night's sleep and a nice lie in. This morning was an anti-climax with nothing much to do except load a bit more in to the car and move Robinetta to her mooring. There was not much wind but the rain came and went, discouraging any thoughts of going for a sail, either in Robinetta or in Worm.

We went for a walk up to the Craft Kitchen, the Ardfern eatery we have yet to try. We both decided we could have pretty much anything on the menu by shopping at the Post Office and putting it together on Robinetta. Needing to stretch our legs, we carried on a bit down the peninsula. They are building new houses just south of the village and there are a number of yacht moorings further down the loch. We both felt like we were now twiddling our thumbs and we might as well start heading home. We have arranged to have lunch tomorrow with Alison's parents in Kirkcaldy and we wanted to to do that, but it meant driving 140 miles in the morning, with another 400 after that to get home. We decided to have an evening in Perth.

Back at the marina we finished unloading. Not staying the night on the mooring allowed us to walk the sleeping bags to the car. Robinetta was in a good mood leaving the pontoon. I put the the tiller right over and just watched, hands free as she pottered backwards and turned beautifully round.

Once facing roughly the right way I took the tiller and we motored out towards mooring S3, right next to where we left her in July. When we got close, we could see it wasn't going to work. Meander on S2 was on such a long chain that there were only inches between her stern and S3.

Alison called up the marina on the VHF and explained the problem and asked for instructions. The lady said to go on S4 if it was clear, which it was, so we picked that up and and I made sure we pulled up enough chain that Robinetta would stay nice and close to the buoy and not foul anything on S3 or S5. The only thing left to do was to put the cabin cover on. The roof leaks and it will help keep some rain out of the cockpit too.

Alison rowed us back to the pontoons and we hauled Worm ashore and borrowed a launch trolley to shift her to the dinghy park. We put the floor slats in the car - they have warped badly and one is broken, we will make a new set. Both turn-buckle mounts have come unglued again - epoxy doesn't like being in the bilges and the wetted area isn't really big enough. I'll have a think about what to do with that.

We stopped the car to take a last look before heading east. Robinetta looks at home. When we got to Perth we really couldn't be bothered to find a nice, cheap place to stay so we just asked the Mercure, near where we had parked, for their best rate and we didn't choke so we took it.

The Perth Playhouse was showing the film Lucy in 2D IMAX and we had enjoyed the trailer when we went to Guardians of the Galaxy so we bought tickets and had a coffee in their café while we waited for the performance.It was a cleverly scripted, well acted piece of hokum. Alison found the violence a bit too believable and I know what she means. Afterwards we went to the Everest Inn. Three out of Tripadvisor's top four restaurants in Perth are Indian, the Everest is currently number two and it was really nice. We had Nepalese specialities and I even had a Nepalese beer, which was rather good, for a lager.