Into the Clyde at Last!

I hope that isn’t a spoiler – yes, we have made it!
 
It was a very bouncy night on the mooring off Gigha until the small hours when it calmed down. We thought about heading to the pontoon to pay but decided to do a BACS transfer once we get home.
 
First on the agenda was the re-instatement of the bobstay. I retrieved the broken end from the block on the chain. It had been tied on with a bowline. Most of the other end was intact. It was long enough to do the job but not quite long enough to have enough to make off at the boat end. I’d brought it inside the night before, but it was still too damp to properly heat-seal. I did what I could with the ends of the three strands and took it forwards.
 
With the bowsprit reeved and the end of the chain on-board it was easy to put an eye splice on the block on the chain and thread the line through the tackle and back into the boat. I added another line to the end with a sheet bend and we were in business.
 
The wind was very light, but it was, as forecast and hoped for, from the west. The Mull of Kintyre was back in the plan! We were tired from yesterday, and from a disturbed night on the mooring, so we decided that if we got round the Mull, we would anchor at Sanda Island. This is a small island just off the south-east end of the Mull of Kintyre. It is currently owned by a Swiss Millionaire but normally uninhabited. The anchorage has reasonable shelter and it would be almost 10 miles shorter than going to Campbeltown. I put in a course on the chart plotter just to the western end of the Mull, so we would have a constantly updated ETA. We wanted to be there about 14:50, just as the east-going tidal stream started.
 
We dropped the mooring without incident and headed south. We got the main up but the light westerly breeze wasn’t going to get us to the Mull by the time the tide turned in our favour, so we motor sailed. It was so light that George was a good option and we pressed him into service. If this is the first page of our travels you’ve come across, you’ll need to know that George is the tiller pilot. If you’ve read about him before, you’ll know that getting a good mount for George has been a never-ending struggle.
 
Recently, we’ve pressed the portable anvil into service as it has a hole in the top that’s perfect for the peg. Some days, lashing it down works perfectly and others it doesn’t. Today was of the second kind. I had two goes and Alison had two goes too and neither of us could stop the anvil tipping over. I think the left-over swell from the previous day’s strong southerly winds was just too much.
 
The result of this was that the microprocessor in the tiller pilot – George’s ‘brain’ was a little confused as it didn’t have a stable place to push the rudder from. It was working but needed continual adjustment to keep us on course.
 
Meanwhile, the weather was dull, but getting gradually better. Re-tracing yesterday’s somewhat wild run from Machrihanish was a long and, perhaps even boring trip, but with George’s assistance it was an easy journey. We needed to keep the engine on all the way to maintain speed but there were no problems.
 
Once past Machrihanish, we came in really close and once we knew we weren’t going to be late we turned the engine off and sailed gently along the coast. I reset the route on the chart plotter to take us into the Sanda Island anchorage. The sea was almost a flat with a gentle swell coming in from the south. The sun was properly out now and we had blue skies and green hills. As we turned the first corner, we brought the mainsail in and gybed it over – perhaps a little sooner than it would have come over on its own but now we’d be on the same tack for the rest of the trip.
 
The gentle breeze took us round in bright sunlight and a calm sea. The contrast with yesterday was amazing.

Mull of Kintyre lighthouse

With the wind from the west, rather than the north-west, which was also in the forecast, Alison suggested we could go onto Campbeltown. With the likely speed we would get, we could be there around 7pm, or 8pm at the latest. As George had done most of the work in the morning and the sailing was so easy, we weren’t as tired as we had feared we would be.
 
Alison put the new route in. It looked good but we thought we could still divert to Sanda if the wind wasn’t good at the Clyde end. I started wondering where the Clyde actually started. I decided, somewhat arbitrarily, that we would be in the Clyde once past the red channel marker buoy to the east of Sanda.
 
As Sanda came nearer we could make out the conical form of the Ailsa Craig beyond. We’d seen it last in 2017 when we came north on Robinetta’s 80th anniversary cruise. Then we’d come up from Port Patrick in company with Molly Cobbler to the Scottish OGA Campbeltown Muster. We’d also sailed past in 2016 from Largs on the way to Ireland. Robinetta had passed her once before, in 1937, on her maiden voyage to the Clyde. The Ailsa Craig is visible for miles and I remember being aware of it as a child on holiday in Scotland. Once of its claims to fame is that all curling stones are made from rock quarried on the island.
 
The village at the end of the Mull of Kintyre is called Southend. It doesn’t have much in common with its more famous namesake in Essex, although they both have caravan parks. There is also what seems to me to be a ridiculously large hotel, which I remember from our cruise in 2017.

Arranman's Barrels Buoy with Sanda behind

We passed the red buoy, and we were in the Clyde! At Alison’s suggestion we celebrated with caramel wafer each!

As we turned gently north and trimmed in the sails, we came onto a beam reach which took us all the way to Davaar Island outside Campbeltown Loch. The wind was dying now and what was left would be on the nose in the loch so we dropped sails and motored in. We got a wonderful sunset and came into the Marina in full dusk.
 
We took the only free finger-berth in the marina. We phone the number on the gate and Calum answered and texted us the codes for the gate, the toilet block and the wifi. All set up very well for a late entry.
 
Once settled-in we walked into town to the ‘Crew’ fish and chip shop and bought fish suppers and took them back to the boat to eat. Lovely freshly cooked fish and chips and just the right quantities.
 
Yesterday it felt like the weather wanted to keep us out of the Clyde. Today we were welcomed in like VIPs.

Davar Island at the entrance to Campbeltown Loch