Tobermory and Loch Drumbuie

We came to Tobermory to make sure I would be able to take my class. I woke up late and got up even later.

We were on a buoy so we had to row ashore for the heads. We got back with 5 minutes to spare. I managed to get online before the teacher!

Then we were just going back ashore to get some lunch and a lovely Australian chap came over in his dinghy and we chatted for the best part of an hour.

It was 12:20 before we got ashore.

We got hot pies and ate them and then it was time for my next zoom call, a conversation session associated with my class.

I started that from the harbour side, but then it started spitting with rain so we went back to Robinetta. It was fun joining one breakout room from the shore, another from the dinghy and a third from the cabin!

We had told the harbour we would be leaving at lunchtime. So after my second zoom session we headed over to the fuel dock and filled up and headed out.

I'd suggested Loch Drumbuie for an overnight. I wasn't expecting any wind but we had a smashing beat around the rocks off Loch Sunart and then a very gentle run in, all the way through the narrows into Loch Drumbuie.

Once through the narrows we turned head to wind and put the engine on to drop the sails. This always drops the volts to the chart plotter and it restarts.

Not this time. It went off and stayed off and the VHF was off too. I swapped the fuses with the cabin lights and the cabin lights still worked so we had a wiring fault. That shouldn't be triggered by a voltage drop.

We had lost depth but we still had a chart plotter and GPS on my phone. We knew where we were on the tide and what the rise and fall were tonight. With the Antares charts, we reckoned it was safe to anchor without a depth gauge.

So we went for it. There was already one yacht in the north anchorage and another in the north east but loads of space left. So I laid out 16 m of chain and we dropped in what we think was 4 m under the keel at high water with 2.5 to drop.

Safely at anchor, I started looking for the fault. I'd worked out it wasn't in the switch box when Alison put her coat away and everything came back on line. 

So there is a loose connection in the wet locker. I'll find and fix it before we leave.