South to Tobermory

An easterly wind got up in the night, and Robinetta was restless on the mooring. Having wined and dined a little too well last night I was not at my best, but neither Julian nor I wanted to stay longer, so dropped the buoy just after 8 a.m.

The harbour entrance was very bouncy, and the wind on the nose and the tide heading into the harbour brought our speed under engine down to 2 knots. We slogged over to the shelter of Rhum before trying to raise the main sail, and did so with a reef in. Julian managed to get a weather update, and the met office forecast took us aback. Variable 2-4. The wind had felt much stronger than that! However the met office was right, and we soon shook out the reef.

Calm after a bouncy start, Canna in the distance

We headed down the west side of Rum, on a straight line course for Ardnamurchan point. The wind came and went, and the engine went on and off, but we had 4 hours of sailing in our 10 hour passage, which was much better than we did on the trip from Canna.

There was not as much bird life as earlier in the season, but we were briefly visited by dolphins. From what we could see they lacked the yellow stripe of common dolphins, and we wondered if they were Atlantic white stripes, which are also on the local cetacean listings. However a local expert I asked later said tht white stripes were very rare, and they were most likely to be Commons, whose yellow stripes can be very pale.

The wind died away as we passed Ardnamurchan point, and the sea became glassy in the sound of Mull. As soon as we were safely past the wash from a ferry coming out of the sound we got the sails down.

An hour later we were on a mooring buoy just off Tobermory marina, and after a light dinner (it was a diet day) I rowed us ashore to the co-op, and for a walk around Tobermory. Nothing seemed to have changed since we were last here, except that Cafe Fish, cooked no fresh fish; smoked fish and shell fish only.