Giving up

This morning the weather forecast had changed for the worse. Yesterday, the forecast for Thursday and Friday had looked good. Now a new low was due to form by Thursday night. It seemed to form from nothing centered on Glasgow bringing more gale force winds to the North Channel.

It was just too much. The chances of moving the boat were vanishing. We looked at ways to get home. A taxi to Belfast and then ferry and train to Largs looked viable. Alastair and Christine on Snowbird felt the same - they wanted to get home to Arran.

We spent the rest of the morning booking tickets and taxis. The local Downpatrick taxis were not answering and some of the Belfast ones tried to make things complicated. Luckily we found a lady at ValueCabs who just made everything easy for us.

Snowbird has an immense array of electronic gadgets but the AIS transmitter is configured with the previous name of the boat. I looked on the web and discovered you have to plug a laptop in via USB to change the settings. We looked but couldn't find it without pulling out the Multi-function displays. Something for them to do another time.

We invited Alisdair and Christine to dinner and went shopping. Alison found some pork loin in the butcher and thought to do our favourite Japanese pork and ginger dish but we couldn't find root ginger or Chinese leaves so she picked another recipe. We added the same potato bake we had done in Westray using the Omnia.

I found dulse - the local edible seaweed and decided to make it into a starter. Gently steamed in a little water and butter and tossed with crispy streaky bacon lardons and shallots it made a lovely salty dish.

Alisdair and Christine brought wine, apple pie and cream. All-in-all a fine meal.