This is the day after last years conference in tropical Liverpool taken as I sailed seawards down the Mersey like a million mariners and emigrants before me. It's posted just to test the system which is my neat little netbook which will, I hope enable me to keep in touch this summer. I leave tomorrow to negotiate the next door river,The Ribble whose delights I am sure I have bored you with before. High water is about noon and I am hoping the sun will shine.It does wonders for morale.

As always I get butterflies when setting off on another trip. I never seem to get used to it. It's always better when I actually get going. I hope the next transmission will be from some beautiful remote harbour in Ireland or Scotland.

Two flying displays

The lower reaches of the Ribble cannot be described as pretty, the banks are a mixture of flat salt marsh, some WW2 concrete bunkers, and a bit of industry. They are nevertheless home to thousands of birds. On Wednesday motoring down to the sea with the ebb tide I disturbed a huge flock of some sort of wader who put on one of those synchronised flying displays which we find so intriguing and appealing, making continually changing random patterns in the air before settling back on the mud again. Nearer to the sea is Walton airfield where the new European fighter is being built (or tested or something), it is frequently seen around Preston. That morning it was apparently flying circuits, the downwind leg bringing it directly over "Christabel and Sheila" at what seemed like mast height, lowering its strange undercarriage as it turned onto finals. There are conflicting opinions about the usefulness of this incredibly expensive project, but you can understand what a thrill it is for the young man lucky enough to find himself in the driving seat of a billion pounds of flying machine.

Nearer still to the sea off Lytham even the moored fishing boats were flying the England flag. When I arrived in Liverpool 12 hours later on the next high tide, the same flag was to be seen flying from the balconies. I concluded that England had lived to die another day. They were not going to be made to walk home after all!

From the outer buoy which marks the entrance channel to Liverpool, it is 17 miles to the city centre. The north bank is a more or less continuous parade of docks. The burghers of Liverpool must have contracted for the shifting of millions of tons of spoil to dig out all these basins. Alas, most of them are empty now or given over to various watery amusements. It seemed a little sad that the busy magnificence was almost gone. Imagine those docks full of hundreds of ships with their crews on the rampage ashore. No wonder Liverpool was considered a wide open city.

This modest mariner had a polite little rampage to Tate Liverpool to look at Picasso's work. I can't make my mind up whether he is a genius or a trickster but I spotted a couple I might buy if I had a few tens of millions lying about.

Spring Cleaning

Boats are like babies, they need their bottoms cleaned occasionally. Not as often thank goodness, it is two years since my old lady has been exposed in this undignified fashion.

But it's the time of year when old sailormen's thoughts turn to ........ well, in the case of the older ones like me, the sea rather than other things. Why we do, I am not so sure even after 40 years of it. People say its the last wilderness, which is surely true and you don't have to fly to the other side of the world to find it either, it's on your doorstep. Just the other day a fishing boat skipper remarked on TV that it's always a bit frightening, in fact he said, if your not a bit frightened, you shouldn't be there!

After my disastrous cruise last year, my plan this year is to have no plan, I will just wander where the wind blows me and, if I stop enjoying it, I will head home. I do have one commitment though and that is to visit the river Mersey later this month when I am involved in a conference. I have never before ventured into that famous stretch of water which is effectively next door to Preston. There is something exciting about taking a small boat into a big famous harbour. I have done it in places like San Francisco and in Sydney but in the UK only in Portsmouth and Plymouth. Both of these latter places are nowadays dominated by pleasure boats. The Mersey still has the gritty atmosphere of a serious commercial harbour, although in fact it has a big busy marina.

The tides and sandbanks make for quite tricky pilotage but I actually enjoy that aspect of sailing. The difficulty is that I have to be there at a specific time. If the weather doesn't cooperate on the appointed day, it will be back to train or car which will be disappointing.

Still it's midsummer so I keep my fingers crossed.

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!

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.