Heading north to Mull

 I had expected to be woken in the night as Robinetta swung on her anchor, but apart from a little swell when a coaster went past the anchorage was totally peaceful. There seemed to be a bit of a back eddy as I could not tell if she ever moved in the night.

Knowing the tide would not be in our favour until 07:30 there was no point thinking of an early start, but we were awake by seven, and ready to go by 7.45. There was some wind, and Julian wanted to raise the main at anchor, but she was lying at an angle to the wind, so I suggested having the engine on and seeing if we could sail off on the stay sail. In the event we had to motor towards the anchor to break it out, so we would not have been able to sail off anyway.

We did get the main up as soon as we were clear of the bay, and we tried sailing, but there was not enough wind to give us steerage way against the tide so the engine went on again almost immediately. It stayed on for most of the morning as we headed south of Oransay. Its fringing reefs come a long was off shore, but most of them are above the water so safe in daylight.

Once we changed course to head north the wind felt a little stronger, but it was another hour until there was enough to fill the sails. For a while we made way with engine on, engine off every ten minutes, but by13:50 we had a good sailing breeze, and we had a couple of hours sailing past the West Reef towards Bogha nan Ramfhear cardinal. By the time we rounded the cardinal the wind had gone, and we put the engine back on and headed for Tinker’s Hole.

Nearly everyone one we talked to about sailing near Mull mentions Tinkers Hole, and we had never been there, so decided it was time we visited. Finding it is easy with the chartplotter, but very difficult without. There are several inviting sandy bays between granite headlands in this South West coast of Mull and motoring past them to head into a narrow channel with high rock walls to drop anchor seems counter intuitive. However it is a popular thing to do, and there were already 4 yachts there when we arrived. All of them had dropped anchor then run a line back to the shore to stop them swinging. We intended to do the same, but the closest we had come to this before was in Padstow, where you moored the bow to a buoy before dropping back to moor stern too to a pontoon.

In Tinkers hole you drop anchor, then motor back towards the walls to tie your line. There are two rings set into the cliff at the northern end of the Hole and one of these was still free so we decided to use it. This was not as simple as it sounds. The water was so clear we could see the bottom at 5 metres. I could see some sand, but there was also a lot of weed, so I waited until I could see a patch of sand and dropped the anchor there. Paying out the chain did not take us back towards the ring, so I got in Worm with a rope, intending to row to the wall.

It has been a while since I rowed Worm by myself, and the glue joint holding one of the rowlock mounts failed as soon as I put pressure on it. Luckily the people in Aurora IV, the yacht next to us, had been keeping an eye on us and they came over in their electric outboard powered dinghy and took the rope ashore for us. Julian paid out more chain and Robinetta swung to lie the same way as Aurora. We had a little chat with them, and discovered they were anti clockwise circumnavigators out of Ipswich, which was fun.

After a pleasant drink and dinner (a dried risotto pack we had bought on Gigha) Julian and I headed out for a row in Worm, round to David Balfours Bay where we could go ashore on a beautiful sandy beach and have a walk. The scenery was lovely and the row easy, which made a great end to the day.