The final leg

Well, almost.

I checked the forecast first thing and it was still showing 20 knot winds gusting nearly 40 knots from 4pm but the early part of the day looked good.

Alison agreed that we should go. There were plenty of places to stop if the wind or sea-state was too much. Rothesay, Kip and Holy Loch were obvious choices.

We left at 8am. Pretty much the whole CCC contingent left before us, or soon after. Winds were light and many just motored but we motor-sailed as far as the entrace to the Western Kyle.

After that the wind kicked in and we sailed. Alison said "We never checked the tides through the Kyle". This could be a problem. It was now springs. Alison checked and it looked like we would reach the narrows in the first hour of the foul tide.

When we got there I decided that if the tide was against us, then the southern channel was likely to have weaker tides than the main marked channel as it was wider.

I don't know what the main channel was like, but the southern channel was fine. We got through without difficulty. We had made great time to the narrows and it was now about noon. Of course the bigger CCC boats were going up to twice as fast as our 4 knots and were probably near their home ports by now.

Through the Kyles of Bute

As we sailed through the Eastern Kyle towards Rothesay the wind built steadily. As we got to the moorings west of Toward Castle we turned to put a reef in. Alison had forgotten the procedure. A good enough reason for it to be her turn! So we pointed head-to-wind and under instruction, Alison:

• dropped the peak halyard so the gaff was horizontal, 
• untied the throat halyard and re-tied it where the reef should be
• untied the furling line and hauled the sail around the boom until the luff was tight
• made off the furling line
• raised the gaff and made off the peak halyard

One might wonder if the sail would fall down while the throat halyard was loose. In practice it rarely does.

As we had reefed all the way down to the first mast hoop there was one more step. We untie the first hoop so that if we need to reef more, we can.

 That left the helm much easier as we came out of the Eastern Kyle into the Clyde proper and turned north.

Today was a busy day for the Coast Guard and the RNLI. The Campbeltown all weather and inshore lifeboats were tasked to three different incidents and the Troon ILB had to rescue some paddle-boarders from the river (Irvine?). All these were tasked by Belfast Coastguard on VHF channel 16 and we listened intenltly. Two of them started with DSC Mayday alerts. We took down the co-ordinates but they weren't near us so there was no need to try to help. The Campbeltown incidents included a small boat sinking near the Mull of Kintyre and a chartered yacht that had been dismasted in Loch Fyne. They all seemed to end without injury.

It had been a dead run all the way to Toward so we expected a reach in the Clyde. We thought that hugging the Cowal coast would give us the flattest sea with the least fetch. But there didn't seem to be much sea all across to the Ayrshire coast. The gusts on the Cowal side though, were getting rather fierce. We took the helming in turns. Alison set her 'helping hands' - a 2:1 purchase on the tiller. But she still found the gusts pulling the head around too much so we dropped the staysail and carried on with No 2 jib and deeply reefed main.

So after a while, we reset the course to head across the Clyde directly towards Cloch Point, where the coast turns east towards Gourock. The original course I had laid in took us all the way to Stroul Bay outside our house. But given the strong winds overnight, Alison laid in the course to Rhu Marina just the other side of the narrows.

We did get fewer strong gusts on the new course but the wind back around to behind us. It always feels strange when the wind is doing the opposite of the forecast, but local land forms change local winds beyond anything predicted. With the wind behind us, the jib was not helping, so we furled it and put the staysail back up.

 

 

Dunoon

Passing Dunoon we got our first view round the corner of Cloch Point and spotted the TV transmitter mast on the Rosneath Peninsula - we were nearly home!

Rosneath Peninsula

We got round the corner by Gourock almost bang on 4pm and so did the stronger winds! Sometimes punctuality feels like an overrated virtue. The strong winds were coming from the West blowing right up the Clyde towards Glasgow. Suddenly the sea state became much rougher too. The waves weren't big but there was a lot of spray. The helm became very heavy and it was time to reduce sail. We put the engine on and went head to wind and pulled more of the mainsail around the boom. It helped a lot.

Back on course, we left the engine ticking over in neutral so it was there in case we needed it in a hurry. We put our life-jackets on too. Robinetta was coping with the conditions fine but it was very hard work.

There is a sandbank between Gourock and Kilcreggan called the Rosneath Patch. Our course took us north of it and the seas and wind were pushing us even further north towards the Rosneath shore. Trying to keep on course against that I pulled the helm over a bit too far and the boom went crashing over.

An accidental gybe is the one thing all sailors will try to avoid. It can damage the sail and the rigging and worst case, it can cause dismasting. This one, given the conditions, was not bad at all. Thank goodness we had so little sail up.

We put some power on from the engine and got back on course, bringing the boom back over in a controlled way. I said I thought it was time to drop the main. I was thinking of carrying on with the staysail on its own, as had worked for us between Loch Eriboll and Cape Wrath. But as I was thinking about going head to wind again, the sea state was starting to calm down.

We couldn't tell if this was a lull in the wind, or if we were getting some shelter from the Rosneath Patch.

But it did get smoother and smoother and the wind did drop a little. We turned off the engine.

We eased around the red bouys marking the channel into the Gareloch and things just got easier and easier. After a while our speed had dropped to under a knot and I was thinking of shaking a reef out. Then I realised we still had the jib furled and we got that out and the sailing became quite delightful.

We got within a cable or two of the entrance to the marina under sail and then dropped the main and staysail and motored in to a berth.

We were still 1 nm from our final destination, but we were 99.9 % of the way there from Southwold!

We decided to spend the night on Robinetta rather than going home.

Rhu Marina