Today will be a 25 mile trip to Dunstaffnage ( 56:27.0N, 005:26.0W), through the wonderfully named Sound of Luing.

Craobh turned out to be a very sheltered and friendly marina, and we may well return to base Moondog here for a year or two in the future.  However, the job for today was to pick the right time to leave in order to catch the start of the north going tide in the Sound of Luing, and thus keep it to help us all the way up past Oban to Dunstaffnage.  This all worked fine, although there was little wind, so it was another motor sailing day, with the recompense of beautiful sunshine all through the Sound .

Then, very quickly we were in moderate fog after ( fortunately) exiting the Sound at the Fladda Narrows. This focused the mind, and although never very dense, did give us a chance to test all the toys.We had the radar on, and played around with marking and tracking targets, overlaying the radar image onto the chart, and generally making sure there was no blip likely to hit us. The fog stayed with us into Kerrera Sound,  and here we had a good reminder of how the radar really works. We had identified a target moving towards us at 3 knots from ahead, and were listening and looking, sounding blasts on the horn as required.  When too close for comfort, dead stop, and then there it was...a large navigation bouy dead ahead. The buoy’s ‘speed’ was of course the relative motion of us travelling towards it at 3 kts....’simples’ you might hear Bogdan muttering, but a good reminder to interpret the information carefully.

Then the fog lifted as we entered Oban Bay, and it was wall to wall sunshine again past Oban and then into Dunstaffnage a couple of miles further up the coast.

Bogdan’s Blog

Well this trip was a bundle of laughs. I am not at all sure why we left Craobh ( Crooooove apparently...). It was a lovely sun bathing day , and expectations were high that this might flush out some scorpions for a treat. So, what do we do ?....rush about and go off again ...this is like the search for the Holy Grail. And then, bye bye sun hello the invisibility cloak and back to shivering.  Great amusement though as the skipper  tried to avoid an oncoming buoy hidden in the murk, which as far as I could see was securely chained to the seabed. I will lend him my school books .

I did have a bit of sport sliding back and forth on the jib track, but as you can see from the picture , I am afraid this ended badly, seems that too much rolling about is not good for me. I wonder if the master will be content here, or will we be charging off again? Perhaps there is a golden sheep in the far north , and we are destined to chase it forever....