Rain and wind

The last 24 hour period, and particularly last night, was particularly scary here in the Western Isles. Or to be more accurate it would have been a scary one for anyone not confident in their anchoring skills or caught in an exposed position.

During the day this cruise ship which normally would have anchored out in deeper water, came into Oban Bay for shelter from the elements. With nightfall the weather came in hard. It was just so noisy. Cirrus was blown this way and that, straining and jerking at her mooring ropes with the wind screaming through the rigging and few in the marina here would have slept soundly.

We have been chatting today with a couple, another set of early-retirees, who went through and survived a terrifying ordeal in their yacht at anchor just south of us in Pulldobhrain. This is normally one of the safest and most secure anchorages and it is very popular for just this reason. We visited the place ourselves some weeks back in more pacific weather and found ourselves in a beautifully sheltered pool, just large enough to take about 12 yachts at anchor.

But changes in wind direction can easily create problems when one boat drifts too close to another and the anchorage is open to the north, that is to say a northerly wind will blow waves into the anchorage rather like water blown into a bottle. For a while last night the wind did howl in from the north before veering suddenly and dramatically through 90 degrees and this would have been enough to turn a safe spot into something of a nightmare. The wind strengthened, veered alarmingly then gusted and whirled about at close to gale force. Some yachts can start to swerve about from side to side under these conditions and the strain this puts on ground tackle can become just too much. Several yachts inside the anchorage began to drag their anchors, one being blown sideways until it actually came into contact with the surrounding rocks and became stuck there.

The skipper calmly put in a radio call to the coastguard to say his crew were abandoning the boat before they made the short step, via the dinghy, to the shore and safety but we have yet to hear the sequel on what damage the boat sustained. This picture was taken at low tide the following morning.

Crews on those boats that did come through the night unscathed would have slept little, watching and listening for the scraping sound transmitted along a taught anchor chain that might foretell a slight movement of the anchor through the mud or sand in which it is embedded. Nights like this are what every yachtsman does his best to avoid. It is the secret dread of all of us and gives rise to smug satisfaction when such a night is endured safely.

Island life

The evening clouds boil over distant Mull, all of which augers rain and wind for the days ahead. Well it is August, statistically the wettest month, and I guess the rain has to fall somewhere.

Oban marina is, as everyone should know, not in Oban itself but is attached to the island one looks out at from the Oban shore, across the bay - the Isle of Kerrera. Few marinas have such beautiful surroundings (unless of course they are also located in the Western Isles) but island life brings its complications. There was a time, for instance, when Kerrera was a transit station between the Island of Mull and the mainland and cattle made the final leg of their journey to the mainland from Rhu Cruidh (Cow Point) at Ardantrive - the place of the swimming. Oh for a good boat then! Many a cow would have been surprised to discover for the first time in its life that it had an innate ability to swim, something it shares with most other animals, although sadly not with humans.

Goods delivered to the marina today are placed in the blue box on the north pier in Oban. (I felt a picture was rather wasted but imagine a roadside sandbox in navy blue and you have it.) The ferryman picks up any package placed in or near the box then acts as postman, a system that relies on honesty and local knowledge and now having put it to the test, I can confirm that it does actually work. Since pulling on ropes of any sort is now forbidden to me, something I have in common, incidentally, with one seventh of the seamen in Nelson's navy who would have been found wearing support trusses to provide comfort from their own hernias, I am engaged in some refurbishment work inside Cirrus, removing moribund plastic headlining and replacing with cork tiles. It was the tiles that found their way here via the blue box.

Marina life is endlessly fascinating, watching boats come and go - berthing attempts are always entertaining, newcomers staggering about on sea legs after many days on board, chatting with our new neighbours across the pontoon or else on the ferry to the shops on the mainland. We slowly come to be regarded as fixtures in a world of transients, something permanent, always there when you come by.

Just three boats along on our pontoon lies Shafa, Dave's modest craft. Dave lives aboard with his cat, Sukie, and uses his cameras to take dramatic pictures of some of the boats sailing around these waters. This is one of his. He has a good eye for a shot.

When he insisted on pointing his lens my way, then suggested that a bucket of cold water thrown my way would add to the drama I felt things might have gone too far. Fortunately I managed to dissuade him.

Like our fellow marina dwellers, tonight we batten the hatches securely as there is a gale coming our way. The weather whisks in rapidly from the Atlantic, touches us briefly then moves on. When there is rain, which is often, it never seems to linger and no matter how heavy it falls it always runs away safely. The sea we float on never seems to overflow, which is nice.

When first considering writing about our lives through the medium of a blog it is fair to say that I had other things in mind than the state of our health, or lack of health, at any particular time. However to remain true to my philosophy of describing 'the most interesting things happening to us' I find myself faced with either having to write about these things or else not write at all.

More will be revealed below but first of all I make a sideways swerve as 'The Rut' is always worth a mention, especially as it is currently engaging some creatures' full attention up here.

I confess, of course, that this is not deer stags bellowing across the forest (which happens later in the year) but a rather quieter event carried out by craneflies like these two copulating on our canvas sail cover. Remembering from my own childhood, great plagues of craneflies used to occur in the summer when the air was filled with their clumsy flight and those impossibly-long, dangling legs.

On this occasion I chose not to cool the ardour of these two with a cold spray, and by now, it is to be hoped, the next generation will be planted safely until next spring brings them to life. I still wonder where did all those craneflies go.

Knapdale Forest, at the northern root of Kintyre is the location, just minutes walk from where we are staying, of Scotland's experimental re-introduction of beavers into the wild.

It also supports some of the UK's top predators. Buzzards and golden eagles are a common sight and are heard even more frequently. On a smaller scale, but no less worthy a predator, this golden banded dragonfly stood its ground on the path at my feet, utterly fearless and confident in its ability to take me on if I didn't back off. Its eyes seem grossly over-developed for a day-flying creature but they must give it a terrific edge and make it a terrifying thing to meet if you are on its menu.

A few weeks ago I came into contact with an even smaller 'creature', now common throughout the UK, whilst I returned on public transport, train then bus, from a visit to family in the south of England. For this introduction I have to thank one or more of my fellow passengers, upon whom I would wish nothing more than... a worse experience than mine. The 'creature' I speak of is the swine flu virus.

The symptoms raged their way through my body for four days, during which time each of those described on the DirectGov website came and went in rapid succession. I lost the ability to regulate body temperature, to such an extent I had no idea whether I was too hot or too cold, and sleep ceased to have any purpose or meaning as I struggled to breathe through lungs ravaged by violent coughing. The experience was worse than unpleasant, it was horrible, although if I were truthful at no stage did I ever feel that recovery would never occur. Such was the speed with which this disease rampaged through every organ that it was surprising in the end to find that my body was fighting back, finally, with something rapidly concocted in the antibody department.

Thankfully Kate was not with me at the onset and she has not succumbed to the disease at all, although to make up for this she is now nursing a slightly sprained ankle caused by an unfortunate slip on surface wetted by some of Scotland's purest nectar, its rain.

We are sad to depart the natural Knapdale beauty but to be practical I must be closer to Oban where, in few week's time, my hernia will be operated on. Our three-week sojourn on the Crinan Canal is at an end and new horizons and sunsets await.

Aims and ambitions

Before starting to sail the length of Britain way back in April this year there seemed to be a clear plan to follow, a route around these islands, with maybe some detours on the way - a beginning and an end, even if the middle was a little fuzzy. We had no signposts to follow, although clearly there are many who have been this way before, and if there had been, those signs would have been new and strange to us such that we might have ignored them anyway.

This is a sign I thought I knew well but it appears hereabouts slightly transformed, although the meaning is obvious when you consider the rough forest tracks beside which it appears. For me, in some strange way, this represents the way our original conception of 'sailing around Britain' has shifted as we have moved on; we are still on the bike but we may have gone off-road, just a little.

I blame the Scottish mountains for this. They have enticed us and captivated us, the land has drawn us in to itself, until the signposts of our clearly stated plan have changed into something else. This change of plan may have happened anyway but it is the recent failure of one very vital piece of equipment which has acted as a trigger, that equipment being part of my own body, and this is preventing us sailing south to our original timetable. (Too much medical detail here would not be appropriate but for those interested, follow this link. Warning: this is pretty explicit!)

But like the Clyde Puffer, VIC32, which has been repaired and made to run smoothly after 66 years then, I too can be fixed up. The vital part of me will soon be operated on and once 'run-in' I expect to be as good as new, if not better.

At first this seemed something of a disaster to us as our trip is very much predicated on us both remaining fit and healthy but on reflection, and Kate and I have done a lot of this, we have come to a different viewpoint. It has always been in our minds that we might just stop somewhere along the way and leave the boat in Scotland for the winter. This is something we can do because the boat is our home and we have no base anywhere else nor any timetable to get there. So now that we may be forced, by circumstance, to stay here longer than we originally planned, it merely becomes a question of adjusting our mental maps to this new scenario and getting on and enjoying life.

For the moment, Cirrus Cat remains on the Crinan Canal, still our floating home but now a base from which we can explore the country around us in more detail, experience being settled in an area we love, with plenty of time to enjoy and get to know the land and the people. The fact that this course has been thrust upon us is only relevant if there was some particular reason for a 'round Britain' ending elsewhere. And there isn't. If, as now seems likely, Cirrus Cat were to spend her first winter in Argyll & Bute she will be just as happy here as anywhere else.

At least we have a warm home to protect us, unlike this tiny wee shrew who went a-hunting without his good luck charms and fell foul of the beasties of the night, one of whom then dropped him on the path for us to find.