I haven’t written in a long time. We’ve been sailing a lot; I’ve been worrying a lot about the weather and other things, planning our routes based on the weather and tides, and besides, Zissi and I also wanted to spend some time together and go on shore excursions. So the blog had to wait, but here it is:
We had a wonderful day with Nico and David in Oban. They had to head back in the afternoon, and we went to bed relatively early because we wanted to cast off at 0600 the next morning with the tide.
It was 40 nautical miles to our chosen anchorage on the island of Jura. We knew we would have to motor a good bit of the way and were glad to be able to sail at least a little. On the way, we had to pass through the Sound of Luing and the Sound of Jura and sail past the infamous Gulf of Corryvreckan, the third-largest tidal whirlpool in the world. You definitely didn’t want to arrive here at the wrong time—and certainly not in bad weather at the wrong time.
For us, though, the weather was nice, and we arrived at the right time, enjoying a speed of 9 knots over ground at times. That was twice as fast as our speed through the water.
We gave up on the first anchorage right away because there was no protection from the alrready increasing wind, and we wanted to get a good night’s sleep. We had the second cove all to ourselves, with a magnificent view of the mountains and beautiful light. However, the cold winds were rushing down the mountain here as well, so unfortunately the afternoon and night turned out to be quite restless after all. The anchor held, but Amy kept moving back and forth and jerking against the chain, so that the next morning we weren’t very well-rested and had gone 4 nautical miles while at anchor. We had absolutely no desire to go ashore with the dinghy.
