Day 62 Mon 16 July Kyleakin to Plockton
The day dawned with blue skies and HOT sun! We had our showers in Saucy Mary's, and Benj visited the Bright Water Visitor Centre, which has nice wildlife displays, particularly related to otters. Ian spent some time helping our Dutch neighbours with the engine of The Moonshiner, and we said our farewells and motored out, passing back under the Skye bridge at 1145. The wind was a gentle SWerly, and we ghosted along slowly under full sail, some of it goose-winged, and arrived in Plockton Bay at 1430. By now we had wised up to the fact that late arrivals don't get a mooring, and this time we were there in time to get a nice (free) mooring buoy in the middle of the bay. Plockton is a very pretty village, like a smaller version of Tobermory, which featured in the TV series Hamish Macbeth, and is a very active small boat sailing centre. We dressed the boat overall again, dinghied ashore and sank a couple of good Plockton Ales in the Plockton Inn, then returned to Vega to change for the evening's entertainments. This began at 1800 with whisky nosing and tasting. The Talisker team of young ladies had set out four tables on the lawn outside the front of the Inn, laden with tasing glasses of four different expressions of Talisker: 10-year old, 18-year old, Distillers' Edition, and 57North. The idea was to savour one glass of each, but there was effectively no limit to how many each sailor could have. The crew of Vega were of course very abstemious (well, David was at least), and at 1900 we were prised away from the amber nectar to queue for the BBQ, which was hosted by the Plockton Small Boat Sailing Club, a very sociable group of young and old sailors, with a small but nicely set up bar/clubhouse. The venison burgers and sausages were washed down with a fine ale brewed in his microbrewery by member Andy, who was also the fiddler in the excellent traditional Scots trio (fiddle, mandolin and guitar) who entertained us throughout the evening. Sated, we sang our way back to Vega for a relatively early night.