Cruising Corner

Well – a decent enough summer so far for some or us at least.

Sadly Glasson Dock appears defunct at the moment with the outer gate lying mud-stricken so that must have stuffed the summer plans of a few.

Plans to reach Orkney have been realised by Robin and Gina Marsden – ably assisted by the Ships Boy.

I understand he jumped ship to party on Mandy Baldam’s rather fine OVNI but being a loyal crewmember he got back onto Temptation in time for the next leg of the voyage.

I’ve been getting updates of their trip from Gina and by all accounts it been a great one. Feels like a cruising log contender for prizegiving

Chris and Jo Haworth also ventured out beyond Ardnamurchan but not having the luxurious facilities of the Moody Eclipse, not to mention weather protection, their trip was shortened by the prospect of a very snotty bit of weather.

The family are currently over from Denmark and we had a lovely week around Oban. Armed with the Antares charts we spent time exploring places where the bottom is close to the top – miraculously without that heart-stopping clang as you get a little too cocky.

Did you know that if you switch on the Oban Webcam on your ‘device’ https://www.oban.org.uk/northpierpontoonswebcam/ and go onto a pontoon in the Transit Marina – you can see yourself!! – Perhaps I do need to get out more….

Whilst we were in, a Block of Flats parked up just outside Oban Bay and disgorged its 27,000 occupants ashore in lifeboats so they could get onto one of the 127 charabancs that were lined up to take them to Tourist Honeypots.

They had a Piper welcoming them ashore and my Grandchildren were really impressed for a second or two when I told them as we walked out of the Marina, that I’d laid it on for them. The lad wouldn’t speak to me for the rest of the day once he found out that Grandad was telling porkies.

Well – that’s enough from me - Log book entries are welcome for the next edition – make a nice change from having to read my drivel, don’t you think?

Anyone having to make decisions about their Calor bottles? We have 2x 4.5Kg blue bottles and after some speculation, it seems Calor have discontinued supply. Flogas is an option with £55 to stump up for a regulator. Lovely – think we’ll go onto cold food!

Just Cruising Mutterings

I always find it interesting to learn what fellow cruisers use when navigating.

My old mate Stuart Carter is strictly a sextant man and I’m sure he shuns modern tech. There is plenty of choice and we do have options from the basic GPS units through to AIS/GPS driven chart plotters – the choice is changing all the time and for sure, it doesn’t seem to benefit from price reductions – that’s sailing for you!

                    On my recent trip to Islay, I was pondering how things have changed over the past 25 years since I was there last. I see from my log of the time that we were using our Decca set. When that worked it was truly remarkable – Lat and Long position clearly given and just the parallel rule to swivel across the chart to put a neat little cross where we were. Actually the reality was quite different – the blasted chart always got a ruckle in it and so the ruler would stick so you had to start again and then the boat usually pitched off the top of a wave and the tiny, neat cross became the size of a crucifix. Added to that of course, was that strange anomaly when the Decca set decided to display ‘Position Suspect’. This never happened on nice clear days!