A  rain free morning, on what was going to turn out to be a lucky day for us as we made our way to Cairnbaan on the Crinan Canal( 56:02.0N, 005:27.0W).

The day started off well, with no rain ( and the confirmation that we had not been poisoned by Chris’ mushrooms), when Michael secured a 95p discount in the marina chandlers for being the first customer of the day. Another plus for Ardfern.

We set off in leisurely style at 10am to potter down the other side of Loch Craignish and across the bay into the Crinan Canal. The next bit of good fortune was that the crazy lock keeper who had been here on my last trip was not to be seen, and the lock was being operated by two very nice young ladies who did not see it as necessary to open all the sluice gates together to see how many boats would survive. We rose gently and efficiently up into the canal, and learnt that our fellow yacht in the sea lock had retained the services of Jimmy to assist them through the locks. Fantastic news !

Jimmy is a retired waterways man who now will help a boat through the Crinan by opening the locks, which otherwise has to be done by the crew on this canal. I had been persuaded that it was too soft to seek Jimmy’s help when there were three of us...we should be able to do it all ourselves. It is worth noting that this view was expressed by Helen, who...surprise....was not actually part of the crew that would need to do the heavy lifting. But now we had a game changer, in that we could not avoid Jimmy’s help even if we wanted to, since he would be there anyway. All I needed to do was stick like glue to my new found best friend in the next yacht.

This turned out to be a near perfect situation. Jimmy ensured that all the locks and bridges were set for us, and we were through the locks in no time. It was also interesting that Jimmy was way past the point of even bothering to ask a crew to throw a line up to him, he simply extended a long boat hook, onto which you placed a loop of rope, and voila, you are moored in the lock with no drama, shouting, crashing or general mayhem. My theory is that the Caledonian lock keepers do not do this because their lock gates close mechanically, ie they are fairly bored and the rope dance breaks their day. Jimmy has more than enough to do with all the manual working of the gates, so does not need this extra distraction.

It was with some regret that we moored up at Cairnbaan, at the bottom of the last big flight of locks before arriving at Ardishaig at the end of the canal. Our friend was going all the way through that day with Jimmy, but we were going to rest here for the night, in a very pleasant mooring, next to an equally pleasant pub.

All this good fortune had to be paid for ....in addition to making a contribution of course to Jimmy’s modest fee.  Fate got its books balanced with us as we moored up. This was the last task of the day, and rarely could a mooring be easier than to this pontoon in the canal, with no wind or current. None of us really know what happened, but we ended up not properly joined to the pontoon, and drifting across the canal into the path of another boat, and then trying to motor off whilst still connected to the pontoon with a stern line. Peace and tranquillity to full on chaos in about 10 seconds. Thanks to some sterling fending off work from Cathy, no harm done and we were soon back to normal.  The moral of this is that you are not moored up until everything has stopped moving....