Ardantrive Bay, 0800 hours.
Brit beat Chris to being the first up. Skipper Dave was last up. The outlook was good (at least if we ignored the storm warnings on the radio). We had a nice breakfast and Chris caught a dogfish. We all cheered.
A ‘phenomenal’ event took place in the early morning when Brit took to the mast like a pro and, for charity, climbed to the Crow’s Nest. We all cheered.
Frankie and Siobhan followed Brit’s example and scaled 7 metres to the tiny platform, and yes, once again, we all cheered.
Departure from the pontoons was delayed when Dave spotted a rogue object under the keel and it was deemed necessary to assess and possibly rectify the problem before embarkation. Juliette went swimming to identify alien element – apparently an errant rubber strip on the hull had come loose. We could now leave the pontoons. We all cheered.
Debbie was needed to help with leaving the bay so Andrew finished prepping the Flapjacks (for consumption later in the day). They went into the oven for the recommended 20 minutes. By this time the Silurian was into the Sound of Mull and heading north for the more sheltered waters of Loch Linnhe. 20 minutes later everyone cheered – the flapjacks were ready and they were once again very nice.
On effort observations began and for some time no one saw anything (not even Frankie, who had once again scuttled up the mast for some quality freezing.) Then, while passing Glensanda, somebody (I can’t recall who, but it was Peter that identified it) spotted a Sea Eagle. It was a magnificent sight and we all cheered once again.
The weather was graceful and at times actually quite pleasant as we progressed north past Lismore, and we even spotted a couple of porpoises (Frankie again) off Shuna. Rounding Shuna and heading south past Castle Stalker brought a different kind of weather but nonetheless it was nice. Until, during Siobhan and Chris’ watch the wind kicked up quite a storm and threatened to chuck unlifejacketed Siobhan overboard. And everyone nearly cheered.
We struck out south to return to Ardantrive Bay and managed a rather graceful landing at the pontoons. Chris was once again fishing (and caught another flaming dogfish and Jill made stew for dinner (which was really really nice, by the way). She even managed to include a label for Dave. Tea was followed rather nicely by an hysterics match where just about anything anybody said made people laugh like ‘hysterical things’. Siobhan added Narwhal to her wish list, everyone swapped daft drinking stories, Andrew pointed out hot pads look like giant oatcakes, Juliette giggled a lot, Dave should have gone to specsavers; I think you get the idea behind the maturity of the following conversations and stories. Dave and Juliette fixed the dinghy from making unwelcome noises and Yes! Everyone really did cheer!!