Disaster Strikes!

Having at last found a signal for this device, I have to report that all my sailing plans are in tatters because last Tuesday I slipped on the foredeck while picking up a mooring and broke my wrist! Fortunately this happened in Tobermory which is quite a busy place by highland standards. It also has terrific personal service from the NHS. The local clinic sent me to the cottage hospital 10 miles down the road so I now have one arm in plaster for the next six weeks. I can't of course sail my boat with one arm, just getting through the normal daily tasks is difficult enough but, thanks to the kindness of the locals my boat is now in an alongside berth so that I can step ashore and get to the local shops and so on. I have to see the consultant in Oban next Wed, which is an hour on the bus and then an hour on the ferry. After that it is a matter of waiting for friends to organise a rescue expedition. It's 200 plus miles back to Preston and, to manage this passage I need at least one able seaman.
There are many worse place to be stuck than Tobermory. It's quite a famous place now thanks to childrens TV, it's pretty main street facing the sea, with the pastel coloured houses must be nearly as well known as the Piazza San Marco in Venice. It supplies all this sailors modest wants except there is no library although good bookshop and even a proper butcher. It also has a wonderful prospect down the Sound of Mull, an ever changing scene especially in the recent showery weather. It seems to rain in the mornings and then turn into a hot sunny afternoon. The small marina is busy with boats arriving and departing all the time. Yesterday there was much excitement at the appearance of an otter, blithely chewing away at a fish and seemingly unfazed by its audience.
Now that I have found this hotspot I will be bacj perhaps with an appropriate photo.

Sailing? What sailing?

I know I am in Scotland because the boat moored next to me is called "Whigmaleerie"! I have no idea what it means but it is unmistakenly Scottish isn't it? In fact I am in Oban and this is the first time I have been able to find a signal for my wireless modem since I was in Campblelltown. I can't complain about the weather can I? I spent yesterday drifting slowly north up the beautiful Sound of Luing where the main hazard on that day was sunstroke. The occasional seal which stopped to look at me looked as sleepy in the sunshine as I felt myself. I also saw the first dolphins of the trip.
Pilot Books provide all sorts of information for the wandering sailor to supplement the charts and, quite properly, contain lots of warnings about the hazards to be expected. It's true that there are places around here which can be quite dangerous in heavy weather. Around the famous Mull of Kintyre, for instance one is warned of "tremendous seas" which can engulf a small boat. In pleasant summer weather such as we've had for the last month it could be the Mediterranean. I had to motor the whole way around the Mull in flat calm; it was slightly disappointing, but only slightly!
Oban seems to make its living selling the idea of Scotland which we used to get rammed down our throats by the BBC on New Years Eve. Andy Stewart, remember him? I think the original culprit reponsible for creating the whole tartan romance was probably Sir Walter Scott, who was himself a Scottish legal officer a Sheriff I think, and ought to have known better. Sailing slowly up this coast now virtually uninhabited, you can see, if you look carefully through binoculars, the ruins of stone cottages on every island, even the small rocky ones, which reveal that there use to be plenty of people here. The story of what happened to them in the 18th and 19th centuries, betrayed by their former tribal chieftains and shipped off to the colonies is not at all romantic.
However, they do brilliant Fish & Chips in Oban!