A coast line with castles

The alarm went at 5 a.m. for the second day in a row, but this time we had our cup of tea before getting up. We had not stowed much away on arrival in Amble, there did not seem any point putting the sail covers on when there was no sun to damage the sails, so it did not take long to prepare Robinetta for sea. It had been drizzling ever since we arrived in Amble and was actually raining as we backed out from the pontoon, but by 06:02 when we cleared the harbour mouth it had stopped. 

This was looking like an all engine, very gray day. The light following wind was just strong enough to waft the exhaust fumes back into the cockpit, which made things worse. However Walkworth Castle through the early morning haze created an atmospheric scene and as we passed Dunstanburgh castle the sun began to be visible through the cloud, and by the time we were passing Bamburgh Castle we were in bright sunshine. But there was still no wind.

For some reason both Julian and I were hungry. Porridge for breakfast, then a cup of soup rather than tea still left a gap to be filled by an apple, then biscuits with another cup of tea...

As the views of Lindisfarne Castle faded into the distance the wind began to strengthen, and a course change let us try sailing. We rigged the gybe preventer and had a couple of hours under sail while we ate lunch, as we still had room after all those snacks. Unfortunately our time to destination was getting rather late. so the engine went back on at 13:30. We were pointing straight at Berwick on Tweed (no obvious castle!) when we decided to stop sailing and Julian pointed out that this was the problem with having a set destination. With no time constraints we would  sailed to Berwick rather than motored to Eyemouth, but doing that would have left us no chance of reached Arbroath on Monday.

We reached Eyemouth at 16:30 and called to announce we were entering the harbour as instructed by the CA Almanac. The Harbour master replied, and directed us to a berth on what we had been told was the visitor pontoon. This seemed to have changed, as there were a lot of fishing boats on it, and the sign was crossed through, but there was a nice clear area where we had been told to moor up.

The HM met us there, but decided we would be better on the "town" side of the quay if we could fit in a tight space between a trip rib, and 2 small rafted up yachts. We looked over at it, and Julian agreed. He went to pay for the mooring first, as it would have been a long walk round to the office from the new berth. I bottled out of getting Robinetta into the tiny gap, so Julian took over and wriggled her in perfectly. The owner of one of the small yachts came and helped to take the lines, and offered advice, which was not relevant to our long keeler!

Eyemouth means ice cream with 2 award winning makers in the town. Julian and I bought a tub each and ate while we walked to the Co-op for provisions, wandering along the narrow roads to the shore front. We were too tired from our early start to do much sight seeing, but we did put the sail covers on, and filled our diesel tanks from our cans, before setting our alarm for another 5 a.m. start.