After the previous day of locking down Neptune’s Staircase we were ready to get out into open water for a bit of a rest.  This was to be a trip of just under 30 miles to Dunstaffnage ( 56:27.0N, 005:26.W), working our way down Loch Linnhe.

It was a glorious, if windless, morning and we were out of the sea lock by 9am, and motoring down past Fort William in bright sunshine, with great views of Ben Nevis and the surrounding hills. The locking time worked well, putting us on the beginning of the ebb tide, which would help us on our way down the Loch, and in particular would give us a following tide through the Corran Narrows.

Once through the Narrows we had a little bit of breeze, and it was off with the engine and up with the sails. This pleased Michael, who is a keen Laser sailor, and Cathy and I watched the maestro at work as he tweaked all the bits of rope we could find.  Racing habits die hard, and we found ourselves inventing races with nearby yachts as we drifted gently southwards in the sunshine.

Eventually we decided we needed a rest from all this concentration on rig tuning, so dropped anchor in Airds Bay for a lunch stop. This was a very pretty place, with parkland around a grand old house, leading up to the hills beyond, and no other boats in sight. All of this resulted in Cathy deciding that this was ideal swimming weather....which it was until you actually went into the water. I lasted about 2 minutes before deciding that seeing Moondog from water level, in icy cold water, was over rated.

Cathy on the other hand was made of sterner stuff, and swam around declaring that it felt warmer once your body had chilled down and shut off the nerves to your skin. Michael and I were not persuaded, and started to wonder where I had put the First Aid manual on hypothermia. Eventually Cathy was ready to come back on board, but it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity to clean some weed off the rudder, when we had a crew member already cold and in the water..... Cathy did an excellent job of scrubbing the rudder, and we were sure this would give us an extra 0.1kt, which as Michael observed would be worth a mile in a 10 hour race. This was surely the most dedicated contribution to boat maintenance of any crew to date, and has set a new standard.

Once Cathy had thawed out and fully recovered, we left the bay for the rest of the trip to Dunstaffnage, sailing most of the way in the rather variable and light winds, relishing the performance improvement from the cleaned rudder.