After a much clearer fax test from John we arrived at the sea lock to find a queue for the gates but within half an hour we were being beckoned into a very tight lock along with a Contessa 28 out for a week’s sailing from Glasgow.

Strange to be in a boat looking down onto the sea! 7 locks up to the summit at Cairnbaan then a descent down through a stair of locks to the sea lock at Crinan. The wind was gusty in the locks and  Fiona thought the first challenge from this trip would be Polar bears but it turns out locks bite too. We left Crinan at 19:00 to a lovely evening, with Jura and Scarba sharp in the west.

With the wind from NW we decided to sneak up the sound of Cuan rather than the sound of Luing since we’d not get there before the tide turned against us. Besides, none of us had ever been through the Cuan sound. The tidal overfalls through the Dorus Mor were spectacular as was the reach up the Seil sound at 7 knots plus. The idea was to anchor near Cuan sound to wait until the tide turned back in our favour, which it would do sometime before 4am.. Rounding Torsa the anchorage near “Dog Fort” looked exposed so we sneaked past some nasty rocks and after stooging about to check out the depths we put the anchor down in a small bay littered with fishing buoys. The holding looked suspect so perhaps Dog Fort would have been better. Alarm set for 3.45am as we want to catch the tide through the sound of Mull and also in the narrows at Kyle Rhea.

James in the Crinan canal near Cairnbaan