Julian did not start raising the anchor until 09:45, and we motored gently north with the flood tide under us all morning, although we did raise the main sail.
By 12:53 it felt as though there were enough wind to sail, so we stopped the engine 4 miles south of Pladda at the end of Arran, and sailed at 2-3 knots for a while. There was a small boat with two rod and reel fishermen aboard who shouted something at us as we inched past, giving them plenty of space. I did not hear what they said, but according to Julian it was "Get out and push!" Robinetta was doing less than 2 knots at the time...
By 14:40 the wind was just too light to give us steerage way, and the tide was no longer with us, so the engine went back on for an hour, but then the wind came back, and we ran towards our chosen destination of Brodick. Julian remembered going there as a child, and wanted to visit again, and I had not been there since I was 18 on a university field trip.
As we crossed the entrance to Lamlash Bay we got a wind shift that required us to gybe, but rather than doing that we turned towards Lamlash and sailed inside Holy Island instead of along the eastern side as we had planned. It was a perfect solution as when we did gybe inside the bay we had a fast broad reach towards Hamilton Rock at the northern entrance to the bay.
Once clear of Hamilton Rock at 17:00 we came off the wind and ran towards Brodick. There are 15 free visitor moorings there, and we planned to take one. As we approached I could see that there were plenty of spare moorings, so rather than putting the engine on I sailed Robinetta into the right place to let Julian pick up the mooring line. The maneuver went well, given that I can not remember the last time I sailed onto a mooring!
That evening we were hailed by Jeremy Taylor who rowed over from his boat having seen us sail in. We invited him aboard, and had a lovely evening exchanging sailing experiences.
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