Meeting friends at Puilladobhrain

Leaving Tinkers Hole required us to untie Robinetta from the ring before hauling up the anchor. The problem was that we were near low water, so there was a bit of a scramble up to reach the ring. Julian got into Worm and pulled himself along the mooring rope rather than rowing, then when he reached the shore had to work out which was the best way to reach the ring once he landed. He tied Worm on to his life jacket so he had his hands free, and did his first bit of real rock climbing since his teens. Luckily he remembered his training and made his climb without incident.

Julian had hoped to use the rope to pull himself back to Robinetta, but it was too heavy to carry while climbing down so he dropped it to let me pull it back on board. Then I went forward to pull up about twenty metres of chain that we had let out last night so our rope would reach to the rocks.

Once Julian was safely back on board and Worm was tied astern we put the engine on, and I went forward to pull up the rest of the chain. It came up clean, but with a lump of kelp on it that made hauling up the last few feet a bit heavy.

We motored out of the shelter of the passage into Tinker’s Hole and found a nice sailing breeze. Despite the fact we were not in clear water Julian wanted to raise the main, and after a little reluctance on my part he got his way. We sailed out of the Eriad Channel with a two reefed main and staysail only, but within half an hour we had shaken out the reef and unfurled the jib.

The tide seemed stronger against us than expected and the wind had dropped, so we were unable to make much progress. The engine went on at 10, and stayed on until 11:35 when the sight of a Bermudian yacht sailing made us try to do the same. We had half an hour of gentle sailing in the sunshine along the south coast of Mull, but our arrival time at Puilladobhrain was predicted to be in the small hours. We had a dinner reservation at 7pm at the pub by the Bridge over the Atlantic, so we put the engine on again, and motored for the next six hours until we dropped anchor in Puilladobhrain.

On the way in to the main pool we passed three of the OGA Round Britain fleet anchored in the entrance, Barbarrosa, Charlotte Elizabeth, and Oystercatcher of Glenarm. We were tidying up ready to go ashore when the single handed skippers of Charlotte Elizabeth and Oystercatcher appeared in a dinghy. They too had dinner reservations so we jumped into Worm and followed them to the pub for a very pleasant meal.

By the time we got back to our dinghies the tide had gone out a long way and it was a bit muddy carrying them back to the water. However it was a pleasant row back to Robinetta, and our fellow OGA members joined us for a nightcap before returning to their boats. We accidentally anchored in the perfect place to get a view of the sunset over Mull.