Mooring soon

After many years in the planning, things are finally taking shape for visitor moorings to be laid outside Carradale Harbour, making it a place where yachties like us can moor up for the night during the sailing season.

My involvement in this has been to use Cirrus’ chartplotter to generate some latitude and longitude positions so that the required permissions can be obtained. In this photo, imagine a line of yachts just right of centre, quite close to the shore, lying between 55° 35.627’N, 5° 27.904’W and 55° 35.664’N, 5° 27.963’W and you get the picture. Having visitor moorings in place will put the village on a par with many other small communities in the Clyde and indeed all over the Western Isles. It is because there are so many places to stop that makes this area so attractive to sailors and word will soon get around that Carradale has moorings, sheltered from the westerly winds, close to the shore so that yachties can pop ashore for a drink or a meal. We can expect a steady stream of yellow-welly-clad visitors to Carradale this summer.

Given some dry weather Cirrus’ lower parts will soon start to get some attention. I have promised her that the many layers of antifouling paint will be scraped off this winter and made a brief start at this job last week. But then decorating inside the house once again took over our lives after Kate disappeared upstairs and began stripping the sad-looking wood-chip paper from the bedroom ceiling, not a job for the faint-hearted. In the end I noticed what she had achieved and had no choice but to join in and apply some layers of fresh paint but then when my back was turned again she had started stripping the walls too. So we decided finally that a complete room makeover was the only option left and each evening now we admire the paint splatters in each other’s hair and are reminded of our house makeover in Yeovil last winter.

On a day off we drag ourselves to the top of Deer Hill, our favourite jaunt from the house, to admire the winter views and smell the winter smells. It is a rare day of almost calm. The sea is smooth with tinted ripples dappling its surface although the air is cool, threatening frost.