The Clyde, not the Caribbean!

When I took this yesterday, I was slathering on the sunscreen and looking for my floppy hat, most unusual around here which is the entrance to the Clyde with the Ayrshire coast very dim in the background. The red object is my faithfull windvane which has steered my boat many thousands of miles including right round the world. I take the wheel myself only very occasionally.

This sunny passage led me to Campbelltown at the tip of the Kintyre peninsula where I again had my haircut by a bloke who claimed to have performed this same service for Sir Paul himself who is of course an occasional local resident. There is just a small pontoon here for yachts, it's basically a fishing port. The small space gets very crowded and therefore quite sociable although I felt this cosiness got a bit too much when I was woken from a peaceful sleep about midnight by a late arrival,crashing alongside and a bloke leaping onto my deck and peering down at me in bed through the open hatch.

The fishdock is directly opposite and is busy all the time. The catch is mainly langoustine, lively creatures about the size of your thumb when topped and tailed. They look very good but you don't see them in Morrison's, I suspect they all get sold for fancy prices in London. The boats unload them straight into the refrigerated trucks which carry them off.

Tomorrow I plan to head around the dreaded Mull, a passage which has to be carefully timed to take advantage of the fair tide. Next stop should be Islay which I think of as the fist of the real western isles.

Frustrations

I am in Ardrossan, Ayrshire, which is an appropriate place to quote Robert Burns "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay" since that famous bard was born around here and spent his short life not far away. My plans are all up the spout and my ambitious plan of sailing around the UK looks increasingly doubtful. Why? Partly because progress northwards was frustrated by northerly winds but mostly because Christabel and Sheila's two sources of motive power, the sails and the engine have both failed me. This last week when I have sailed up from Northern Ireland to Scotland I have had some sort of problem every passage I have made which is very wearing. It makes me wonder why I don't take up some less stressful activity like crown green bowls.
However, after two days in this hospitable marina I now have two usable sails, thanks to a charming lady called Sally who runs the local sailmakers. I also THINK, after spending a whole day prostrate on top of my oily engine, that I have solved the problems with that. I have to give itanother trial run in the morning to be sure.
This is a delightful place to be stuck though. I suppose most people think of the Clyde as a place of derelict shipyards but it is in fact a huge and beautiful area designed to give endless pleasure to those who take to the water. I know that I will be tempted to stay here for the rest of my summer cruise but I will try to be more adventurous than that after I have had a couple of days to recover from all the effort and stress of the last few days.
My mother was born around here but moved to Glasgow when she was a very little girl. She had an aunt who farmed on Great Cumbrae Island, which is visible from where I sit pecking this keyboard. They used to have summer holidays there, getting to the island via steamer from Glasgow. Going "doon the watter" it was called. There is a survivor of that period, almost 100 years ago in the shape of a beautiful paddle steamer which still plies around these waters in the summer months.
Sorry no photos this time.

Illustrations

"We joined the navy to see the sea/ And what did we see? We saw the sea!" as the song goes plus occasional things like this (on the left) which is a buoy moored a few miles off the Irish coast. These things all have resonant names, this one is called the Skulmartin,are much bigger than they appear until you get close, this one is about 6 metres high. It's round top tells a passing mariner that you can safely leave it either side. They need a fair bit of maintenance which is done by an ancient body called Trinity House who get around in their smart ship which can pluck this thing out of the water, clean it up, repaint it and put it back.

The pretty small marina on the right is at Portaferry in the narrows leading to Strangford Lough, the tides here run up to 7 knots and are now used to generate electricity via an underwater turbine. It was finished quite recently. This marina is under the charge of John Murray , a real gentleman who occasionally swops his jeans and jumper for the more conspicuous orange suit and white helmet as cox'n of the local inshore lifeboat, a big RIB (Rigid Inflatable), a spectacular craft which can zoom around at 25knots plus. It's a very impressive sight at full chat and John and his crew exude that air of invincible competence which is the hallmark of the RNLI everywhere. British yachtsmen have to go abroad to find out how good our lifeboat service is, noticeably better than even our nearest neighbours across the North Sea and the channel. And all entirely financed by voluntary contributions and mostly manned by unpaid volunteers.

I surface at last

At last! I have been able to get a signal on my wireless modem and also manage to down load a photo. I don't want to excite you too much so I will restrict myself this time to this one, which was my lunch some time ago, actually election day I think. This communications revolution which is supposed to put me in instant touch with the world wherever the wind blows me has proved to be not quite up to snuff. However, today I am in Bangor, that's the Irish one not the welsh. It's a busy seaside place about 10 miles from Belfast. It is humming today because it's their summer maritime festival. The crowds around the sea front as always are quite a shock after the solitude of the open ocean.

I stopped herebecause I have the inevitable problems with my old barky and needed a spare part which I knew would be available here. I also needed to consult a doctor because I thought I had broken my neck! Literally I mean. I had a tumble in my dinghy while attaching a line to a mooring buoy and developed a distinct pain in the neck. However the nice nurse with a very attrractive Ulster accent assuredcme that it was merely a muscle sprain. I have an enforced layover until Monday because my spare part has to be delivered from Belfast.

I have been pondering about the importance of tides to seafarers who choose to rely on the wind for power. Modern sailors in powerful motor driven vessels don't worry about them much, but to a slow old boat like mine, two knots of tide can make a big difefrence. If it's with you, your speed might be 7 knots, if it's against you 3 knots, less than half! Of course every schoolboy knows that the tide is influenced by the moon and rises to high water twice a day. If you ever had a seaside holiday you could hardly escape that observation. But it's a lot more complex than that in fact. Although the rhythm is fairly fixed, the height of the tide varies every day, every week, every month and every year. This vast mass of water flows in and out of the Irish Sea, through its northern and southern entrances in a complicated patterm determined by the geography and the nature of the sea bed. Fortunately, generations of hard working surveyors have spent wholeworking lives charting this complex patterm so that the modern sailor has access to all the secrets for a few quid spent on a tidal atlas. Observing these ever changing movements of the waters a romantic like me can see it all as the breathing of some underwater giant. now shallow, now deep.

Northern Ireland is a delightful place, a well kept secret for most English people, but it's not Scotland and my arrival here is not getting me around the UK. My chances of being in Orkney by midsummer are fading, but someone said somewhere that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. I am not sure that I agree with that principal but I am still travelling hopefully and, perhaps more important, happily!

Election Fever

The fully illustrated version of this blog will, I am afraid, have to be postponed. I am having difficulty in downloading the photos I have taken. However I spent election day becalmed in the middle of the Irish Sea, a wierd experience, a sort of limbo. I entertained myself with George Elliot and bit of fishing, catching two fat mackerel which were filleted, fried and on my lunch plate within 30 minutes of swimming happily about. Hopefully they had no hint of their fate. When the wind did stir, it was a mere zephyr from the north which pushed me very slowly towards Ireland so that I arrived of this village of Ardglass at about midnight. As always in these situations when trying to make sense of the various lights which mark the dog leg channel, I remembered that my colour vision is not very good. "Is that really a green?" I ask myself "or perhaps a white?" Reds usually stand out pretty clearly. When at last I could see an empty berth in the marina in the pale moonlight it was a considerable relief. Parking my old barky is a bit like getting a 40 ton artic into your back garden, I really needed a helping hand on the dock, not to be expected at 1am. Finally tied up safely I felt that I had earned a dram.

My neice Pauline said that this blog needs more pictures, so here's two of "Christabel & Sheila" still languishing in her winter berth (with my bike in the background). Hopefully this will be her last night of repose. We leave at 0630 tomorrow, the wind is fair for Scotland, if this high pressure persists for another day or two the next stop might be Islay. Morrison's shelves are bare and I will not be looking for a grocery store for at least two weeks. It will take almost three hours to get through the lock and down the river to the sea and, for me, that's when the holiday starts. I will breathe a huge sigh of relief when I pass the outer buoy.